Sure, but that's what makes it a mediocre game. The fact that anything COULD happen doesn't justify any random thing that happens. Real life may be a chaotic mess, but the art of storytelling is to pull order out of that chaos. That's the difference between telling a story and just relating a bunch of things that happened. AL did the latter, IMHO.
I've defended the way Bella's path ends if she finds Cathy's panties, because while that particular outcome was unexpected, to me it's logical that Bella would see that particular act as indicative of the MC not taking her relationship seriously. I'd be a lot less tolerant if Bella called it off because she learned the MC offered to help Maya... much less if KRJ just killed Bella because Quinn's off-brand drugs gave her a bad trip.
Besides, it's still a bait and switch. AL wasn't portrayed as a game about how our choices are inconsequential in the face of an uncaring random universe, yet that's largely what it becomes. The focus of the final quarter of the game isn't on the MC putting his life back together, it's wallowing in how miserable his life is in the wake of the infamous fire. Any healing is secondary and out of our control.
Frankly, I think it's rather shameless the way AL uses the death of Meghan/Melissa as a crutch to cover for the barebones conclusion. If it worked for you, that's fine. But it definitely did not work for me, even as a deliberately bittersweet ending.
It seems the more a game or show shocks, the greater the critical acclaim. AL's scene was shocking to anyone who didn't see it coming and it had the intended effect, it's still heralded by many to be the greatest AVN ever.
Like "The Usual Suspects", "Sixth Sense", "Fight Club" and so on, if you didn't see the twist, it blew you away. Luna's backstory in The Deluca Family is the only reason that game stands out in my mind (although that wasn't a twist, but it was truly harrowing).
I still maintain that there were clues to AL's antagonist's personality very early on, although I didn't expect such an outcome and had pretty much forgotten about them when it all went down.
The sad thing for me when playing AL was that I focused only on one LI (Meaghan) for the first (and only) play through, so when the ultimate choice came, I literally didn't have a choice, there was only one name specified for me to click on, so I was robbed of that gut wrenching decision, and any subsequent playthroughs wouldn't have resulted in the same impact since I would have known what was coming.
I'm sure the game would have had a much bigger impact on me if I was given that dreadful choice, but in the end I didn't like it for pretty much the same reasons as
ename144 states above, and the mc's behaviour was even more ridiculous given the girl who died wasn't even an active love interest in my play through. I also found the ~20 year age gap too creepy for my liking.
The ultimate fallout from AL is that heaps of people are bracing themselves for some equally gruelling experience to occur in BaDIK, but such a future event has already lost its impact due to everyone's expectations. DPC would be a fool if he repeated a similar veined predicament as it most definitely would not be received well by anyone.
