Even if you play as the good husband Leah does what she does and you lose someone you really care about. So I agree with the him that every ending you get is bittersweet at best
I'd say that it's a bit of a fine-line distinction, but the game doesn't really provide you with "choice." It can't. That's just not something that you really can have even with this form of media. What it does do is provide you with more of an illusion of choice.
Now like I said, that's nitpicking a little, but really, think of it like those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. You get to a point in the story, and then you, the reader, are called upon to determine where things go next. "If you do X, turn to page 25. If you do Y, turn to page 36." At its core, that's really all this is. It all boils down to how well the game sells you on the idea that "what you do matters."
The thing is, that's a critical part of the experience. As a general rule, players don't like it when even the illusion of "free will" in a game is bulldozed in favor of "The story must progress like this." It's why complaints of "railroading" are such a thing.
Having said all that, of course I understand that there's only so much room a writer has to work with if they want to keep a tight, cohesive narrative. There's only so far you can allow the players to "roam" before you have to drag them back on course. But again, it's all in how you sell it. Hauling on the reins out of the blue and yanking everyone back onto "the proper path" is a good way to reinforce the idea that "Well, really, you don't have any say in how this goes, Player. You're not in charge of this story." Which, if we were sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories or hoisting a few beers in the rear corner of a dingy-lit bar, would be fine. But it doesn't always work so great in
video games.
I know there was a lot of hullabaloo about how many endings the game would have, but looking at them all, they kinda are all slightly different permutations on a theme. Which, from a narrative standpoint makes sense: again, the story is intended to go "roughly in this direction" meaning that of course all the end points are going to be roughly in the same ballpark. But speaking from a perspective of how well it works as a
game, that's a whole other thing entirely.
