"when noelle finds out kris hasn't been 'kris' this whole time, how will she feel when she realizes she's been reconnecting with someone completely different?"
this sentiment i've seen a lot is an interesting thought but it never actually clicked with me all that much for some reason, and i wasnt sure why or how to put it into words until somewhat recently.
like, i guess i think about it in similar terms to kris's relationship with susie; i think it's unfair to say that kris and susie aren't really friends or something just because that person is 'not kris.' at least by this point, they clearly enjoy being around each other, it's a two-way street. kris is still there, and is always there... on a normal route. that's when our role (so far) amounts to merely 'opening up opportunities' for kris, i.e. giving them a reason to go on Epic Adventures (with the goal of closing dark fountains) all while winning battles with the Power Of Friendship, etc.
sure, we control their specific movements, which will always feel limiting to them (which leads into my assumption that no matter what we do, kris will always hold some level of resentment towards us -- no matter how luxurious the prison cell is, you will always be trapped).
all of this is my long-winded way of explaining that when the two work in harmony, the boundary between kris and the player becomes less distinct. that's why the separation between the two didn't feel as important in chapter 1, where there wasn't really an opportunity for things to go 'wrong,' so to speak. so if we follow the path of least resistance -- how the story 'should' go -- then i think it's fair to say that at least SO FAR, kris is still there, working with us when they have to, not shutting anything out in particular, becoming real friends with susie, and reconnecting with noelle.
the time they spent together in cyber city wasn't 'fake' -- kris is still there, emoting, our voice going through their mouth, they're having fun with noelle (i always think of kris saying "Nooooo" when noelle asks if they need a dog treat, they had no reason to actually howl like that, i swear to god they're just enjoying being a little goofy like old times)
(there's also plenty of other examples of our prompts (presumably) coming out of kris's own mouth in their own voice, they're just in control of HOW it comes out, i.e. yelling "NO" or barely muttering "yes" after spamton neo. but this post aint about that so im moving on)
all of this is the normal route, of course. i dont think i need to explain how much this differs in the weird route, lol. we force kris down a path they Very Much Most Likely Don't Particularly Want to Go Down, but we make them. they dont want to say Proceed, but they have to, which is when that voice comes out as US, not them. from the soul or something, probably, a voice beaming commands into noelle's mind regardless of whether or not kris actually says anything out loud, hence noelle still hearing us even when kris is down in battle.
this disharmony is what manifests as friction between kris and the player, and while we dont Really know what all is happening inside kris's head, i sort of always imagined it as kris closing off/almost going dormant, as some form of protest maybe, maybe to at least communicate to noelle -- the only one who can see something's wrong, not just different -- that this isn't them, it's something else. kris wouldn't do this, and she knows this. that's why when it's all over and berdly has been ice'd, all we know is that they "look kinda..." out of it, distraught, barely there, maybe. i heart dissociation and all that
basically, the split between kris and the player (in my own probably-not-end-all-be-all-correct interpretation of the story thus far) becomes more rigid only when our interests conflict, and the more we work together, the less reason kris has to dissociate, for lack of a better term, and the 'kris' that susie comes to know and noelle comes to reconnect with isn't exactly the wrong 'kris' at all. sure, they're being controlled but that doesn't mean they aren't still THERE.
and if the story continues down along the path of us micro-managing everyone's goals into fruition (noelle getting close to susie comes to mind), kris will still work against us in some ways no matter what we do, but finding some kind of 'happier path/ending' is probably far closer to what they want rather than Manipulating Their Childhood Friend into Killing Their Classmate. just a hunch
anyway the TLDR is i don't really know if the initial question will end up being a problem in the same way that everyone thinks it will, on a normal route. sure, they'll all be shocked and maybe horrified to find out kris is being controlled and whatnot, but that doesn't make the time they spent together any less real, because despite it all, kris was still there.
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