Side-character Stories AKA your "Bonds" AKA ""Social Links""
Throughout your four months in the city, you'll meet a small variety of characters with stories you can follow and help them out with. They're meant to display how the cult has subtly impacted the residents of the community overtime.
Wistful old woman: If you stop by the famous (insert quirky name here) hotel on weekends, you'll spot an older woman playing the grand piano in the hotel's lobby. She explains that she can't play as well as she used to due to her exacerbating arthritis. She used to play her husband's favorite song, and explains that he's currently away and that she'll see him soon - and wants to master the song before she does. She consistently talks about her husband and how she met him, how she grew up with him, throughout the weeks and you motivate her to practice more. The protagonist can ask her where her husband even is, and she confesses that he actually died several years prior. She explains how she was in too much physical pain and wasn't able to play the song at her funeral, and wants to play it again for him. In the end, she is finally able to play the song, and the protagonist, alongside another character, brings a keyboard to his gravestone and she is finally able to play it for him. When checking back at the end of the game, the protagonist visits her house, where she occasionally invited him to spend time with her. Her daughter answers and explains that her mother passed away a few days/weeks prior. Although the protagonist was not able to say goodbye, her daughter tells him that she was so much happier in her final days, and that even though she was in pain, she had been doing better than ever before in her last days.
Disgraced pastor: In the beginning of the game, you can run into a pastor who has seemingly lost his congregation over night. He comments on how hatred reaches people more than love these days, and that a new church has taken it's place. Throughout the course of the game, you can see how this new "church" grows and slowly poisons the community, either led by Abe himself, (the "cult leader") or another brainwashed manipulated NPC. It will be a story about how you help him regarner a smaller congregation with a lesson in not wavering in your beliefs. Perhaps controversially focuses on more open/accepting churches that are not biblical literalists - meant to be a message against extremism and advocating for modern beliefs.
Frustrated teacher:A teacher spends her lunch breaks sitting on the boardwalk during weekdays. Being a fairly new teacher, she doesn't have much say over her recent assignment to the city's school district - and is forced to participate in a summer school program for troubled high schoolers. She expresses frustration frequently in not receiving respect, complaining that none of them listen to her and she doesn't know how to get them to learn. Throughout her story, she both learns how to improve her own abilities, how to connect emotionally with the students, and find a way to truly get through the them and motivate them to not let their upbringings define them. She doubts herself and wonders if she chose the wrong career, and questions going back to get another degree as she recently graduated.
Aspirational restaurant owner:A man has noticed a particular restaurant space always being for sale, and has doubted himself each time he has considered opening one. All his life, it's been his dream to open a restaurant for... some corny cheesy reason. Something about chasing your dreams and seeing things through to the end without quitting. He runs into several issues along the way and ultimately receives an endorsement by the pair of foodie influencers spending their summer in the city as well, causing a rush of customers upon opening.