Maybe you are on to something, and most of us just completely missed the point of the story during the first update. However, the fact that most of us were surprised and appalled by the direction of update 2 is the fault of the storyteller not the audience. It is the storyteller's responsibility to bring the audience where he wants them to go, with reasonable dialog, character progression, and believable character actions.
Look at a movie/book like the Shining. Jack seems a little eccentric at the beginning, but seems like a decent father and husband. However, you start to see clues to his drinking problem as the story progresses, and his slow descent into madness and then violence once he arrives at the hotel makes the story both believable and horrifying. If you had the first scene where he seems like a normal dad and father, and then the next scene he is chopping down the bathroom door with an ax, saying "Here's Johnny", it would be jarring and unbelievable to the audience. That is what is happening so far with Buried Desires.
Personally, I think we are giving the dev too much credit here. There are two scenarios, either the dev planned his story all along to be like this, and most of us just missed the point, due to bad storytelling, or the dev changed his story completely due to external factors, and thus confused most of his fans. I think the second option is closer to the truth, but of course nobody knows for sure.
I missed the sophistication in the dialog, in this game. To me, the dialog was much worse than average for games here, but the story seemed interesting enough, at least at the beginning, for me to keep my interest to see where it is going. English isn't the first language for many devs, but to me that doesn't detract from the story much. But in this game, the dialog was always pretty rough.
I think the main issue, is that most players like to play a sympathetic MC, not one that punches their young niece in the face, due to some minor insults. The fact that the MC immediately asks, "What have I done?" and seems remorseful, doesn't excuse this scene. If the dev wants to turn his MC from a typical family man to a unhinged, violent, physical abuser of defenseless much younger women, he needs to support this with a coherent story, over many many updates.
The quick change in the MC's personality and the story-line was not earned by anything in the story or dialog, and that is why most people here don't accept it.
lol...in terms of brevity and conciseness (on my part, that is) this discussion may be getting somewhat out of hand...I think this will be my last attempt at defense of this VN, that I personally regard so highly.
So, firstly, I apologize. I should have tempered my use of the word "sophistication" by preceding with the word "relative", intending to mean in comparison to many, many other VNs' dialogue and structure. The starkness of the narrative seems to convey very effectively the darkness and seriousness of the (noir-like?) atmosphere and the unrestrained bluntness of interplay between characters in Episode Two, adding an alternative definition of "adult" to the term adult VN. Yes, I grant you, maybe I'm just full of (**)it.
Anyhow, moving on, in the case of Jack in "The Shining" the slow surfacing of his inner demon forms a key element in the story to which we as an audience are fully privy, but what if this mc's descent has already been underway for a while now and we are joining the story at, say, the "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" mark?
Just because we haven't been shown it (yet) in "Buried Desires" doesn't have to mean that the mc doesn't possess an equally dark demon within and is already following an equally insidious and irresistible descent. Perhaps this story is going about a similar premise, only from a different or perhaps tangential, as alluded to in complaints made previously about Episode Two being tangential to Episode One, direction.
Could it be that, unknown to everyone including the audience and his therapist, the mc is, contrary to all prior knowledge even he has of himself, a super-smart, assertive, Bundy-like character who is only now not only beginning to realize that he is seriously not the person he has always thought he knew himself to be but that also a darker, stronger persona within is surfacing, one that he is struggling increasingly to restrain and come to terms with?
Perhaps, what we are experiencing is that which we might had we arrived late to the movie and sat down after the first revelation of the mc's dark side thereby having no knowledge of the truth of his attitude, relationship and indulgences with the tragic student. In other words, the Episode One we have seen is actually Episode Two (or perhaps Three) in the mc's true story. Maybe the prior truth will be revealed later in proceedings as I'm sure at some point it ultimately must. Conjecture, I admit, but doesn't it perhaps offer a possible explanation of intent on the part of the Dev?
Turning to the punch thrown at Luna by the mc, I did not for one moment feel that this was an angry overreaction to "minor insults". It seems to me that Luna has spent significant time alone on the streets and in that time has experienced, dealt with and come to terms with a lot of "life" and adversity already. She's very smart, the whole of the mc's family seems to be exceptionally so, and has been out on her own for a while having to learn to read people quickly and precisely in order to no doubt socially and physically "survive". In view of the fact that the mc is family and, it seems, very close in the past to Luna herself, renders highly credible the suggestion that the girl knows her uncle deep down (perhaps even inside out) and in any case, far more familiarly than some mark on the street.
So Luna therefore knows exactly how to manipulate and push all of the mc's most sensitive buttons which she accordingly proceeded, with unrelentingly provocative relish, to do. Granted, the mc knew she was manipulating him and drawing him in but he thought he was the one in control. That actually made his frustration and anger greater once the argument commenced, and he increasingly realized that control of the discussion and the overall situation was being relinquished to Luna. Luna had already lured him to spend the night at the motel with all that this entailed regarding explanation to his wife and kids and he was already therefore burning on a short fuse of frustration.
Therefore, by the time what seemed to me to be the fairly inevitable point of no return finally arrived, I felt that the mc had tried to the last remnant of his self-control to hold back his (inner demon's?) rage, and so, while I too abhor any form of bullying, oppression, violence or abuse towards women, girls, boys or animals... in fact anyone, I had experienced with the mc the justification for his rage and whilst I did not in any way approve of or feel good about him finally snapping and dealing with it physically like that, I clearly understood the extenuating circumstances involved and therefore was not accordingly outraged. I do not consider the mc's action to have been premeditatedly vicious, sadistic or even directly malicious, it was an encouraged loss of control, followed by an uncontrollable release for which as soon as the balloon had burst (and perhaps with some previous incident coming immediately to mind...?), the mc was immediately, and seemingly sincerely, mortified and repentant.
That's how I saw it, damned if I did.
Incidentally, on a final note, after all my no doubt exceedingly tiresome hypothesizing, I have a question...
Does anyone think there is any significance in the noticeable change in appearance of the lovely therapist between the opening session and the rudely (phone call) interrupted follow-up session?
