you make very good points. i thought about some of these things while I was playing the game too. for me, the emotions the story manages to create are enough to look over these things, but yes, at a closer inspection the story falls apart. i too thought at one point sunny didn't actually care about his friends, especially after the bathroom scene with basil. it DOES make me wonder, too, how these things even happened, because there was clearly A LOT of work and care that went into this game, so how did these things slip by? I think the biggest flaw is their friendship. the only moment where they kinda help each other is when aubrey introduces basil to the group, but then she goes on to bully him for four years so like ??? honestly that whole thing kind of ruined aubrey's character for me, i had thought basil actually did something BAD, but she's just mad cause he ruined the photos? (HIS photos?) like ok. (if she knew about what actually happened to mari it would've been different but she doesn't) i get her being mad about it, but we're talking about YEARS of bullying him while she KNOWS basil doesn't have any other friends (and i mean, he's clearly not doing well, she just seems to WANT him to suffer). like, she's just a bully. and i can't really sympathize with that.
Stories that take a long time to write/develop can sometimes turn out worse than stories written on a much shorter timeline. I’m speculating, but I think that OMORI went through a lot of rewrites WHILE it was being developed, and then, when certain scenes should have been changed or removed, the team was reluctant to get rid of them since so much work had been put into them. By the time mistakes had been noticed, they had already burned too much time and needed to focus on getting the game finished instead of fixing it. Plus, it’s easy for people working on big projects for a long time to get tunnel vision, focusing too much on individual elements rather than the big picture.
And you're right, Aubrey's change in character was way too exaggerated. On the one hand, I like that she actually had a noticeable change between her past and present self. (Most of the characters barely change at all.) But on the other hand, she was way too extreme for a small town bully. Strangely her violence is portrayed as somewhat goofy (since she has a scooter gang and her friends are nerds), but also she wields a lethal weapon: a nail bat (and not just for show, she attacks people with it).Â
(it's even stated to be more dangerous than a steak knife!)
Her writing was so inconsistent. Like, okay, I felt like her resenting Basil for ruining the photos made sense. Sure. She also explains that she didn’t mean for Basil to get bullied do badly, but she started calling him names in school which caused the OTHER kids to bully him. Sounds like an poor excuse but okay...
But wait... that’s not true. From the three days we see in game, other kids weren’t directly bullying him, she was. While wielding her bat. Then, you find out she’s been doing it for YEARS. Years!
Not only does her cruelty seem out proportion, it's out of character. And where were Kel and Hero during this? Even if they were grieving, wouldn't they step in if they saw Aubrey bullying Basil? Kel acts like he's only noticing for the first time in the game. But the town is tiny, how could he miss it? Did ALL the kids except Aubrey and Basil go hikkikomori?
