" The note reading situation is about the same"
Not really. Pigs had way more reading notes as that's kinda all there was too it. Amnesia had notes of course but most of the game was spent being a part of the world (mixing stuff, hiding/running from monsters)
Hmm
I went all the way back to Feb 2012 and ctrl'd F Dear Esther and it only ever came up as an example of game design style
Thanks for that link about their choice for TCR, kinda disappointed in FG though.
What I got from that is that they didn't want to make an 2nd game themselves due to lack of interest, so they had someone else do it. And they seemed to like it for very general reasons.
But oh well, Apparently they appreciated the different direction it went.
I just hope that if they are making a 3rd one they should take over and maybe derive a little influence fro TCR, but not too much XD