I just watched someone else play the game who made, in general, a lot of shitty choices (most of they're decisions in Shel's story was based on trying to "romance" Stephanie). Apparently, killing Danny instead of Justin gets Vince to go with Tavia, and saying "You might find people you know" at the end will get Russell to go too. These seem like super trivial things to me. I can see why saying that might get Russell to go since his motivation is to find his family, but Vince's decision seems completely arbitrary given that he says that Justin ditched him to try and find other people. This kind of stuff just irks me.

I still had fun with it though.

What a shitty way to experience the game. You don't have $5?

@hunkulese: I beat the game already. I forgot to mention that watching this person's playthrough irked me because I got a worse result. Oh well.

How stupid. Guess which two people didn't come with me at the end of the game? Vince and Russell. God damnit.

I killed Justin instead of Danny. Vince still did not go with Tavia.

@starvinggamer: ditto. It seems like they might not be taking just the big decisions into consideration, but also the general way you carry yourself in conversations. For instance, Shel stayed behind with Vince for me because when I played them I was kind of a cagey motherfucker about everything.

I think when playing games like this we need to get over the obsession with good results and experience the story as it unfolds for you. Like, sure, I could have save-scummed Layton Brothers for iOS but there's no real penalty for being wrong and the game is more about figuring out the mysteries. Sometimes I got shit wrong because I couldn't understand the game's wacky ass logic but that's okay. As a whole I think these newer games that aren't necessarily about winning but more about the experience are going to be a thing, and that's okay.