Headscratchers / no-one has to die.

• The game mechanic of you saving everyone is a simulation, correct? Sometimes to save a person, you need to make someone else to operate a switch that pours water out into some of the rooms, but presumably that just translates into telling the person to do this when the simulation becomes real life. From a gameplay perspective it makes sense. But in the scenario where you're choosing between Steve/Troy and Lionel, since we find out Christina really wants Lionel dead, why would she do as you ask and flood the hall in front of him to save him? What's stopping her from just leaving him to burn, or from drowning him, when the simulation becomes real life?
  • Presumably, she has no idea what the switch actually does, as she's in a separate hallway, and is just following the visitor's orders. For all she knows, that switch was essential for saving Steve. It's only after the fact that she finds out and is infuriated at you.
    • Wrong — Christina has been through the ordeal several times like Troy.
    • Not exactly. Though it's confirmed Christina had experienced the final timeline once before, there's nothing to suggest she had been aware at the time of her ending that the player experiences. If the order goes, in it's simplest terms, Christina's Ending -> Final Timeline -> Christina's Ending 2 -> Final Timeline 2, the player would only be privy to the first and fourth iteration, not them all.
  • The bigger question on the table is Troy. He already knows what the switches do, having been in the time loop for at least five iterations... so why would he agree to be saved again?
    • Troy is not that much of a question, considering that at no point he's actually in control. Every time you save him, you merely lock his door before he has a chance to leave the room and after that he can only use the switches to try and save at least one other person.
  • Also, Phase 3's Steve. Saving him requires him to step into a small room in the direction opposite from Christina. Why would he do that after everything he's said about not letting her die?
    • Doylist reason: it's a puzzle game and whatever the player does in those segments goes, regardless of how the characters feel about it. Also, the game is built on having the player make one Sadistic Choice after another, and would lose some of its impact if you suddenly didn't have to let people die. Until the Everybody Lives ending, at least. Watsonian reason: His self-preservation instinct kicked in.
    • Actually, does Steve even know which direction Christine is in? If everything he sees around is unfamiliar maze and fires, following directions of someone who he knows at least tries to save one of them is better than running in random directions and dying without saving Christina.
    • It's established that none of the characters know much about the layout of the building, not even Lionel; they're all reliant on the Visitor to direct them, and they don't have the option to waste time arguing because the choices are listen to the Visitor's directions and maybe live or do nothing and probably die. Basically they just have to hope you're doing as they ask, while knowing that you can't do as all of them ask.
• So, why do the fire doors require security codes, anyway? Wouldn't a mechanical lock have done the job just as well, without getting everyone killed?
  • It's implied that everything, including the fire, was a preset experiment- the company knew of their potential saboteur and intentionally made the rooms that make up the game's puzzles so that there were only certain possibilities on each floor. The goal of the system was to test time travel, and what better way than to use this "possibility filtration system" to create only one inevitable outcome- one where everyone survives. The odds of a few random people managing to escape alive are actually really slim- but they can see in the prime timeline that it was a success when everyone survives. Think the Nonary games, where the system has been rigged to lead time travelers to perform a specific action in spite of all the potential alternate outcomes of time travel. And just like Nonary game, despite the dubious moral and legal issues of the setup, the Fenix company is in the clear for making such an obvious deathtrap because as a result of time travel in at least one timeline no one dies.
  • Alternate, more "realistic" version: budget savings. Fenix likely requires a lot of money for experiments, and it's front doesn't earn much, hence why they save on everything they can. Up to and including "decent" fire safety features, relying instead of whatever cheap versions they could get.
• So what in the world was the Visitor doing in the security room? I remember him saying that he entered the room, and then he noticed the guards' corpses, and then he noticed the fire. What reason did he have to enter the room in the first place?
  • He says in one path that he was making a delivery. Presumably he went into the security room looking for someone to sign for the package, found the guards, and then...well, the game happened.
• This is a minor nitpick I have in Christina's ending: She admits that she was the arsonist, and regretfully states that everyone died because of her. It's understandable for Steve and Troy, two innocent bystanders, but why would she include Lionel when he was her target from the start? She's even happy when you save Steve over Lionel. I am thinking that maybe it's to show she retrained her humanity even after committing the deed, but I'm still curious.

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