A lot of people think the Player is Rich, because of his relationships with several other employees combined with the “someone you lost/loved” comment from Harley, but I keep thinking, what if we’re actually Avery?
Rich and Avery were good friends, they still ate lunch together despite Rich being demoted to another department. In the orientation notebook Preston suggests that Avery was the one who reported Rich leading to his demotion, though in a letter Avery sent to Rich he insists it wasn’t him.
He seems to deny it a little too strongly though, maybe it was him who got Rich in trouble, it could have been unintentional, he might have just repeated what Rich had said while in earshot of the wrong person.
Some other people have theorised that the reason all the employees were there on August 8th was for a promotion ceremony for Rich, the higher ups having decided to make a huge deal out of it in order to crush his reputation amongst the low level employees for good.
If this was the case, and Avery was responsible for Rich getting the demotion that led to him being chosen to replace Stuart as head of shipping, which then put him on the executive’s radar, then the entire thing would indirectly be his fault.
If we’re playing as Avery then that would be the guilt that drove us to return, not only did we lose Rich but we got countless others killed. If we had a part in the hour of joy taking place then of course we’d return at the slightest possibility that there could be survivors.
