[SPOILER ALERT] Can't play Fugitives level with the gun...

[Piano man]

Greetings - long story short, On Stormy Night I used the gun to shoot Todd and exited out the front door. Now however it won't let me use the gun in 'Fugitives' to rob the convenient store clerk. What is with this game? I'd like to get the 100% achieved and it's IMPOSSIBLE. Once you play a level, your decisions are locked in for the rest of the game and won't allow you to complete certain objectives.

I do NOT want to start the entire game again.

[Sorry for the spoilers, but after you post something and try and edit it, Steam will not tell what the formatting command is to put a spoiler blackout in the message]

[Piano man]

IN fact... it's worse than that. First time I played the game, I hid in the squatted house.

I redid Fugitives today and discovered the Motel and slept there, and now when I try and start 'On the run', it won't let me start from the Motel. It will only let me start from the Squatted house.

[Latency]

When you start to replay levels, you must play continuously from your replay start point for any later chapters to be affected. For example, if you start a replay in Stormy Night, you must continue and play both Broken and The Interrogation for it to affect Fugitives. Unless you continue on from Fugitives even those decisions will not affect anything later in the game.

In other words, if you want to fill out all the possible nodes in the flowchart, it is most efficient to start with the final chapters and work your way backwards after filling out everything possible. Because of this, it means you will effectively have to play a very large part of the game (at the very least from The Painter to Night of the Soul) completely through at least 3 times due to the 3 choices in the Painter (chess/book/piano) directly affecting node unlocks in Night of the Soul.

Most people will need even more playthroughs to get the "distant Alice" choices in Crossroads, the achievement for Connor deaths, the "not enough evidence" node in Last Chance Connor and the Kamski ending.

If you are only going for achievements and not 100% node fills, it will take considerably less time. Just finish the playthrough you are on and consult a guide for the rest. It should only take 1 or 2 playthroughs at most to get the ones you are missing. You do not need to completely restart the game, just start at the chapter that affects the achievement you want and continue to the end from there. Typically the only one that requires a specific complete playthrough is "I'll be back" since most people don't know about it the first time through.

[Piano man]

I don't see why they couldn't allow you to continue a chapter based upon the decision you made in a much previous chapter. The game plots the decisions you make, you can alter it and save the new nodes after each level, so why can't the game start any chapter based upon the nodes you have activated?

[Latency]

My guess is due to the complex nature of the event flags in the game they had to set it up this way. With so many branching points when the game looks for data from a previous chapter that has been changed it could cause impossible situations. Some "simple" choices can have effects later in the game that could cause it to crash due to an impossible situation.

For example say you replay Stormy Night and don't get the gun, and then finish the chapter. You exit out to the main menu and load up On the Run where you DO have the gun and had threatened Ralph outside the squat back in Fugitives to protect Alice. What does the game do? Does it overwrite that you don't have the gun so you can't pick it up after changing clothes and use it at the meal?

Alternately, what would happen if you try to load a checkpoint you don't currently have in your "active" playthrough? Say one of my characters is already dead in Crossroads due to decisions in an earlier chapter. If I try to start a checkpoint in Crossroads with them alive, what is the game supposed to reference? What would the secondary character relationship status be?

I don't disagree that it's annoying to have to replay everything, but due to programming limitations this is probably how it has to be.

[Piano man]

Easily fixed... say for instance you do play Stormy Night and you don't get the gun - easy. Finish the chapter and it saves the new flowchart. All it would need to do is do a check to see if the gun was found, and if it wasn't - disable the ability to use the gun.

The game does the EXACT same thing when you play from level to level continuously. Why can't it just do the same when you jump to a chapter? It looks at the previous chapters and then disables any nodes you didn't activate???

[Kibōchen]

Don't forget to return to the main menu if you decide to replay a chapter without saving. Made the mistake of forgetting to and now the game crashes if I try to play new chapters that weren't saved.

[Piano man]

I haven't had that problem yet luckily.