It wasn't that long ago that I woke up in the middle of the night with stomach pains. After a few days, I don't know why it took so long, I ended up in the hospital having my appendix removed. Why am I telling you this? It has no meaning for this conservation, does it? ... No, and that's the same with the two old men for AWAM. You can take that side story out and it has no effect on the main story. You don't have to, and I wouldn't have come up with this idea if AWAM was being made faster, but with the slow development there is a pain point that should be taken care of before everything goes down the drain. Of course, you can now say that at the very beginning of the concept, there was no main story planned at all, just a bunch of unrelated side stories. Which, by the way, I would consider an extremely bad design approach. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a clear main story today, as the name "A Wife and Mother" implies. What makes the old men in the old people's home so nonsensical is that they are only connected to the game through Sophia. This doesn't apply to the mailman, who delivers mail to the whole family and therefore has more story possibilities on his own. The old people in the old people's home, on the other hand, have no real function and can easily be removed. Just like my appendix.
The game is not called "Sophia". It is Sophia as a "wife and mother". That's the main story, that's what this game is about.
The point i try to make is about good storytelling. For example, if you want Sophia to find out late in the game that there's something going on between Dylan and Ellie, it's better to let the player know about it beforehand, even if Sophia can't know about it yet. This is the only way to build up the suspense of whether and how Sophia will find out. You can't do all that in flashbacks, you just have to change the point of view from time to time. But it is still part of the main story. Something that cannot simply be cut out if you want to build on it later.
What I find so interesting is that you chose exactly the plot that I think is best integrated into the game besides Sam-Sophia-Dylan. It starts with the first scene with Dylan and Ellie in the car after the flight, continues with the Viagra incident on the beach, and later have Sophia overhears a conversation between Dylan and Ellie and is happy that they are at least getting along a little better. Which is funny, considering how well the two might soon get on.
.. All of this describes the relationship between the Ellie-Sophia-Dylan. This is part of the main story and it is good storytelling and in my opinion one of the things that makes AWAM so good. If L&P manages to keep up the quality, he could end up with a really outstanding game.
But none of this makes sense with the old guys, as they have no connection to the main story. They simply stand in the void and that is ultimately a wasted opportunity. I hope I could make the difference clear. The old guys are unnecessary and can be deleted without changing the main story in the slightest.
Of course, there are different ideas of what AWAM should be. Otherwise a discussion about the game would be boring. At the same time, however, I think that apart from the specific story, there is something like a common understanding of a well-realized idea.
Anyway, I don't think we should measure quality by the number of kinks a game contains but in how they are implemented. Simply throwing as many kinks together as possible is a recipe for boredom. Especially when the story elements for the various kinks are ultimately just repeated, as is probably the case now with all the HJ Sophia may need to give over the next few updates.
L&P is too slow, and that is something that stands in the way of telling the full story in our unfortunately finite lifetimes. That's the reason why I want to see the old guys and other side stories deleted in the first place. After so many years, it makes sense to face the facts and not just hope for improvement.