But, if Byles is to be believed, character deaths are really only the most shocking and obvious part of the Butterfly Effect system. Dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny choices are made throughout the game, and they can impact everything from the relationship between two friends to how much of the overall mystery you actually end up uncovering.
"Theres no empirical answer really to how many decisions you make throughout the game," Byles says. "There are thousands, literally thousands of endings. In fact, I think its millions. But thats not because there are millions of different endings. Its just that the mathematical permutations of eight people, all of whom can live or all of whom can die in any order in any number of ways. It just gives that many permutations. And thats just on endings."
Byles says he "can almost guarantee that there will be no two people on the planet who will take the same path through the game." There are events in the story that will happen no matter what through the course of a playthrough, but he also mentions "a huge amount of content" a player will never see if they only play the game once.