The author said that none of the characters have EVER been gender-selectable. That doesn’t mean “cut or changed before release,” it means “did not exist.”
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I also really didn’t cut any whole chapters. A few choices were removed here and there, but I’m not sure that I’d call it a lot (at a guess, it was less than ten in total). The editing period was much more about adding things as opposed to removing them. I added around a dozen new scenes (two sets of three pair scenes and at least one set of scenes with individual characters). I think the only large block of text I excised entirely was an overly-complicated one that had to do with how it was decided what outing the PC was invited on around the Chapter four/five area.
I definitely wasn’t going around chopping huge blocks of my own work out of the game. I probably should have, considering how long and meandering the whole thing can be, but I live and learn, I suppose.
A fair chunk of people seem to remember things being in this game that weren’t (though other than the gender selectability thing, I seldom get specific examples) and I can only suppose that’s because there are a lot of pieces of media out there that use the same source material this one does. I have a tendency to inadvertently blend similar media in my memory as well, and it’s perfectly understandable, but the insistence that I’m wrong about the game I wrote does get a little uncomfortable at times.
FoA is certainly not what everyone wished it would be, and I accept that, but something about it being compared unfavourably with a version of itself that never existed is acutely-awkward.
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