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JWeinCom on 05 August 2016
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MTZehvor said:

JWeinCom said:
The choice was made more of a way to alter difficulty than anything. To give Awakening fans something like Awakening while giving old school fans something more old school. Considering that the choice had to be made fairly early in the game (otherwise there would have been no point), I think they did a fairly good job establishing the relationships. It just seems like you were expecting something that wasn't really realistic or promised.

Going to refer back to my third to last paragraph in the OP, which was written largely to counter the line of thinking that it was either never intended or never promised. Along with the fact that every single trailer focuses on choosing between two families, as opposed to two different gameplay systems, as well as the fact that the game forces you to make the choice with all of your siblings surrounding you and then immediately follows whatever choice you make with either Ryoma or Xander (depending on your choice) calling you a traitor (with the game's saddest track playing in the background, no less). I think the game does plenty to suggest that, at least initially, it was trying to make the choice about story more than anything else. Add that to the fact that we knew about the diverging story paths well before we even knew that they would be sold as separate games altogether, and I don't think my expectation is particularly unreasonable at all.

I will say, though, that I did anticipate a not so difficult choice when I picked up the game; just from the trailers themselves, I had a hard time picturing myself choosing Nohr. I certainly saw it coming, at least before launch date, so it's not that I'm disappointed that I bought something expecting a much deeper story. It's more of I saw something with the potential for a unique take on storytelling, and I'm disappointed that it didn't deliver. Even if you don't think that was ever the intention of the developers, I'd still argue it's disappointing that a golden opportunity to do something new with player choice wasn't capitalized on.

Considering that you had to make the choice at the point of sale (unless you bought the special edition of the game) then I'm not sure how you could have expected them to have a huge build up to a major choice. Considering how early you had to make the choice, I'm not sure what you could have expected. 

Trailers are meant to give an overview and to harp on a game's selling point.  In this case, the selling point was simply that there were two different versions of the game.  That is all.  In developer interviews, it was made clear that players should choose based on gameplay preferences.  It was never billed as a moral choice system in the same way as Mass Effect, Deus Ex, or Catherine, which you actually have control over the narrative.   It was simply "hey there are two different versions of this game".