If in saying bold, then you mean stupid, I agree.
I think we've had enough of that attitude from certain people defending the game and accusing anyone not liking it of being shallow or stupid.
I know from reading your earlier posts that you believe, as I do, that it isn't
that those things happened, but
how they were written, that is what we are criticising.
An adult game is an adult game if it has even one adult scene. I felt this game had plenty of adult content, if you made choices in that direction.
Not just doing the over-used trope of stuffing in extra sex scenes, or worse, the on-demand shower/bed dreamscenes is a choice, and not a stupid one. I'm not sure I'd call it bold either, to be fair, but not giving in to demands from some for endless shallow/superfluous lewds isn't a bad decision at all.
And for whatever reason, we know that the fire scene was always a part of the basic plot idea that the rest of the game was created to make happen. Doc had a story to tell, and since this wasn't avoidable, and came right at the end of the meaningful choices on branching, you know it was a central point of it.
Sometimes characters die in stories because it is a part of the journey. Obi-Wan in the duel with Darth Vader, for one example (despite the ghost thing). Someone in your immediate family in every revenge story ever. In a lot of traditional Chinese stories, the MC himself will often die at the end - such as in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - because their culture is rich in the tradition of heroic
sacrifice. Sometimes they even have to die at your hands, in a fight you'd have loved to avoid but couldn't.
So, the story element and decision to use it isn't 'stupid' at all. It just wasn't written as well as in most of the successful stories. At least we are getting a sense of weight in the aftermath,
It just could have done with better pacing and some foreshadowing. It just needed a little more fine-tuning to be the intended "OMG" instead of the actual "WTF", in my opinion. I gave plenty of examples earlier for that, so won't repeat them.