Thanks so much for the comments and to those who sent in a survey response. ;_; We really appreciate it and we're glad that you all seem to have enjoyed it. <3
Egressus wrote:Other than the fact that he uncovered her father being a serial killer, is there any other reason for Elena to kill David?
Her father indoctrinated her and her twin brothers when they were children. David watched as he did this (telling Elena never to forgive or forget) but it was part of his memory that was erased because his forgetting was necessary for the family to stay safe/anonymous after the trial. So it's not the fact that she hates David--it's the opposite! She quite likes David, which conflicts with her feelings of wanting to fulfill what she feels was her father's last wish. That's why she hesitates so much and it takes so long for her to make a move even though there are many times she could have tried to kill David earlier. She finally does so after the rain scene because when it's raining, she feels like her father is crying because he's disappointed in her. She reaches out to David one last time to see if he might be interested in her after all, but he rejects her, so that pretty much seals his fate.
Also, I'll copy an email I wrote to someone who asked a lot of questions in their survey in case other people would like to know this information on the characters/thought process behind the story.
First, The Elevator wasn't meant to really be a mystery in the normal sense of a "whodunit" or whatnot. There's only two characters with sprites, so I think that it's fairly obvious that something was going to happen between the two of them. We probably might have thrown people off a bit more if Jonathan had also had a sprite, but that wasn't really possible due to time constraints and various other issues. Anyway, the story is more about what happens with these two people. Even after you figure out who Elena is, it's still a bit unclear (I hope) as to what she's going to do and why the knowledge is relevant. In the True Ending, David figures it out and is able to come to peace with the whole thing (despite possibly being killed) because he got to see that Elena was alive and doing well even though he put her father behind bars, which ultimately led to his execution.
For Avery, I thought back to all my college lectures on psychopathy and the personality traits that neurologically imbalanced people have. Most people who are serial killers lack a moral compass and often they have very strange reasons (if any reasons at all) for doing what they do. I tried to base Avery off of the Green River Killer (mentioned briefly in the story) and what I know of him through documentaries and research. The main difference is that the GRK killed people he thought were impure/immoral/deserved to die, whereas Avery went in the opposite direction. The GRK had a soft spot for his wife and treated her very very kindly. To this day, despite his life sentence and despite her divorcing him, he writes her letters whenever he can. So I made Avery's "soft spot" his family, though it's strongly implied that he more or less indoctrinated his children, as well. Responses to Avery have been very mixed so far--some people find him absolutely unsympathetic (as you do) and some have said that it's disturbing how relatable he is. When you have a big divide like that on a character who is meant to be controversial, I think that's actually a pretty good thing, so I'm fairly satisfied with how that turned out.
I chose to set the story in the future largely because a huge focal point of the story is on David's memory of Avery and how he is so fixated on it because it's one of the few memories he has of his work. It would be silly to have him just forget things, so I made it a technology thing. There is evidently research being done in this very field today (for the same reason--wiping people's brains of corporate secrets once they leave the company, etc), so it's something that could very well be possible in David's time. For the office, the reason why David keeps hard copies of some of his files is because of that fixation on memory that he has. To him, books, papers, and things he's written down seem more permanent than some data on a hard drive that can be wiped at a moment's notice. Of course, people can still loose papers and file folders, but it's just his stubbornness speaking, I suppose. It's the same reason why people nowadays still read books even though computers and e-readers are so readily available. The second reason for the lack of futuristic technology is because of the fact that David's office is in a poor side of town. It's mentioned that the office they work in is vastly inferior, technology-wise, to other buildings in nicer areas, but they settled on it because it was cheap. You do see some gadgets laying around on the other desk in David's office, but overall I decided that there wasn't much need to show lots of shiny technology that wasn't immediately important to the story. His brain chip and the corporate policy on memory wiping, however, are both integral to the story and aren't possible in a modern timeline.
Auro and I really like interactivity in VNs, so we probably will never make a kinetic novel. I wrote this VN originally for an assignment for one of my college literature courses, so it had to follow a wordcount limit and yet be interactive enough that it would make for an interesting, A-getting project. So I designed The Elevator while thinking of it being more like a real game because if you get the True Ending you win, but if you get the Normal Ending, you've sort of lost. But the game is short enough (and has few enough options) that if you save and skip through things a bit--the skip feature is very useful in VNs for getting different endings--we didn't think it'd be much of an issue, though I'm sorry you suffered for it.
I chose the name Elena mostly on a whim. All the names were basically chosen on whims without much thought put into them except for Elena's fake last name, which was a hint. (this is explained in the Q&A section in the extras you unlock after getting the True Ending)
Sorry it's so long! My tl;dr ways will never change. >.>;;