echo shard
A common trend I've noticed with the first and second game is how people had a preference for the prototype - alpha builds rather than the final product. The games go through so many changes in terms of story, design and mechanics from the alpha to the final build to the point you can say the earlier builds are their own games, mostly because of how much effort and polish is put into them before they're ultimately scrapped or revised (e.g. HNP - Hello Neighbor Alpha 3 HGP - Hello Guest Alpha). I believe the main issue in development of these games is that there are no solid and finalized foundations for the games early on.
Key game design choices, technology (i.e Neural Network), and mechanics should be developed early on and tested separately from the story that is in the process of being conceptualized. I say this as it seems you were all committed to completing Hello Guest at some point in development, exerted so much effort into the design, maps, mechanics, etc . . . but ultimately cut most of the work out once a new story was developed because some things did not fit at all (concerningly at a point in time the game was a month near to being halfway into development until the delay).
I'd also like to add that it feels like the development team got sidetracked by working on stories and cutscenes for completely new and separated builds of the game (i.e. HN2 Alpha 1, HN2 Alpha 1.5, HN2 Beta). Honestly, I'm glad this ended with the HN2 Demo which just isolated portions of the game such as The Peterson Residence and The Barn sequence and that was it. No interesting stories and concepts wasted, and ideas on how the game plays gained.
TL;DR
Focus on testing and developing important tech and mechanics separately, finalize story before implementing and altering mechanics.
supple wagon
whole crater
drowsy mauve