I stepped away from my replay to interject this.
Admittingly, I have played very few AVNs, but of those that I've played and the walkthroughs I've watched, it seems common for the developer to use very basic facial expressions during dialogue, and often they use only a couple of different expressions repeatedly. Sometimes they don't even bother repositioning a character's mouth to show they're speaking, much less try to convey any type of emotion.
For me, one thing to DPC's credit is his attention to this. I've mentioned before his recent improvements to facial animations. However, from the beginning of the game I noticed how much he will change a character's face for dialogue stills. In the Interlude, he turned it up a notch. During the scene in which Zoey is getting her first tattoo, the frequency of Zoey's expression changes jumped out at me.
Here's a compilation of Zoey's face during that scene:
View attachment 1692762
And just like the difference in Jill's face when she sees you with Bella depending on whether you're on her path, the changes can be very slight - especially for those last two.
If there is another game with a decent story in which the developer adds this level of detail, I would very much like to hear about it.