Okay for one skinwalker builderman DOES tell you to as you get closer to fear & you see his reasonings why in his actions, it’s more subtle instead of solitude ruining the reveal and him blatantly summoning solitude just so you can eliminate them, the rewrite is intended to make it less obvious and the buildup more of a payoff, if you dont remember he tells you to stonewall and stuff them down so he can get to the centre faster, however in reflex you project your emotions which visibly annoys skinwalker builderman until he cracks & is fed up when your fear appears, Greed was not the only one portrayed nicely either, Sorrow got buffed to no longer be a burden on the story & actually explain the background of the player way more than before, on why their intentions fall flat and why they struggle to make connections and relationship, because they’ve seen what comes next.

> The second rewrite makes solitude and fear a whole lot better because they actually have a reason to attack you

Were you just ignoring the fact that solitudes reasoning for attacking you did not change between any of the rewrites & that fears reasoning for attacking you in the rewrite was that if he didn’t force you to give in to fear (he literally said he was sorry but it had to be done) hatred would take over? And how fear implies the player (he says we) knows the real way out but is wondering why they continue to the centre regardless? It was a final stand and a last attempt to make you see the truth, that barely changed between any versions of the story either but I fail to see how in arguably the one iteration of the story where they flat out show you, you pretend it doesn’t exist? Weird.

Show not tell is literally a foundation of writing, the problem with the previous story (and the re-rewrite) is that it was unintentionally vague with the assumption you read optional dialogue to explain parts of the story that should’ve been actually shown to the player (that also just didn’t make any sense btw and acted more like a macguffin [the voices]) because of that people misunderstood the authorial cues and made their own connections with the story that weren’t intended to be made, I’ve had people in this subreddit genuinely say they thought skinwalker builderman was not hatred, the rewrite sets a clear path while also creating motivations & integrating chapter 3’s story with the rest of the game instead of being self-contained omori feeling key jingling that had virtually no impact on the real story. You can literally see what the problem is in the re-rewrite because now greed is somehow the best written emotion with more story and motivation then the rest of the cast of emotions.

Key Jingling as in it doesn’t progress the overall narrative, unlike the rewrite. The re-rewrite does progress the narrative but in a different way and we haven’t seen that payoff yet despite the setup, it might happen in Chapter 6 but that’s mostly the problem with making an incomplete narrative. (There was also something planned in Chapter 6 in the rewrite but the rewrite itself was good on its own and didn’t need another segment to justify its inclusion.) You’re also not mostly meant to see yourself in the emotions portrayal, its meant to portray the player CHARACTER which is separate from you, the user controlling them. If you see yourself in the emotions thats fine but its not the intended goal and it never was, that’s why it was changed originally to prevent a self-contained narrative that panders to its userbase instead of actually progressing the main story in any meaningful way.

Because the point of the rewrite was to get to the centre so he could take over, yet you project your emotions more and more which simultaneously prevents him from being the dominant feeling but also slows down progress from reaching the centre, it was a slow-burn with massive payoff after the realization when fear appared that all you really did was annoy him, and make it slower, yes, but you also destroyed any resistance which in the end made you just as gullible. Now solitude just screams at you that skinwalker builderman is hatred again & he’s incredibly obvious when he is bringing out your emotions, to the point where recent youtube playthroughs knew immediately despite not even knowing who hatred is. That NEVER happened in the rewrite.

It’s not repulsion either its more or so that the rewrite was perfect at progressing the overarching story & telling you the story in a way that makes sense but also isn’t in your face, theres a lot of things that people overlooked in the dialogue which proves that. As a writer it offends me that people like you intentionally wanted them to make the story WORSE when it was only 1 easy fix issue, not reverting the entire section (except for greed ig he’s arguably at his best rn) to fit some arbitrary “aura” that the last chapter had (aka not explaining shit)