the MC is such a submissive that he will never initiate the first move unless given an express authority from the love interest
The MC in this game isn't submissive. At times he's
passive, but then compared to Haley (outside the bedroom) most people would be. Still, he
does take an active role with his partners, he just chooses his moments. A least twice now he's pushed Sandra out of her comfort zone, the most recent time pretty hard. He's proactive with Adriana's creepy husband on several occasions. He's capable of being the sexual aggressor with Lisa (not that they've done much). He deliberately forces Adriana to treat him as a sexual equal. And once Haley's sexual submissiveness becomes obvious he very easily inhabits the opposite role.
He does share a sort of flat emotional affect with other Ptolemy-written MCs, but he's nowhere near as much of an emotional cipher as (say) the MC in
Life With Mary. In any case, I prefer that to the creepy, overly aggressive rapist-in-training MCs in so many other games. A matter of personal taste.
To me, what you're incorrectly identifying as submissiveness is a very legitimate resistance to, and even fear over, the consequences of an incestuous relationship. It seems unusual because most incest games pretend it doesn't exist, but this is
far more realistic. (And yes, it tracks very closely with
Dreaming of Dana in that the attraction is obvious from the beginning and the sister throws up delays in the form of sexual diversions while gradually bending the rules until they finally succumb. On the other hand, in this game the roles are reversed in that Dana was the one who imposed all the rules and structure. Here, Haley's literally begging the MC to do it.) I find the conflict between their mutual attraction and their individual resistances interesting, but what I find even
more interesting is how Haley's preferred romantic/sexual identity is proving to be an enormous roadblock to moving their relationship forward. She's begging him to force the issue because it's in direct opposition to her nature to be the aggressor in love and
especially in sex. She wants to —
needs to — be the submissive one, which means she needs him to be the dominant one. He can do that over the course of an individual sexual interaction, but that his own doubts keep him from doing this in a more fundamental "are we going to have this relationship or not?" way, and instead cause him to grow frustrated and eventually even angry at her, is
terrific drama, and
way more sophisticated than the vast majority of games in this genre.
the games would go on about 80% of its length without sex scene with the main girl and then it would throw one or two scenes at the last 20% then finish the game in an erupt manner.
I dunno. I mean, if you only count penetrative sex then I suppose so. But Haley's attraction has been hinted at virtually from the beginning (and completely obvious by the time her boyfriend showed up), they've been dancing around and teasing a physical relationship since all the way back to the pool, and given how freaked out they both are about it the slower-than-usual pace seems completely appropriate.
Now, if the game ends after the second time they go all the way, then I'll be somewhat disappointed as well. There's a lot of drama (which doesn't necessarily equate with conflict) that could still be drawn from this.
So you need to be an ass to your girlfriend and depending on the perspective also cheating to get a sex scene with that Alana chick, so basically she's a shitty person and your MC (on that route) too? Seems like they deserve each other.
Well, the MC has plenty of chances to cheat on Sandra without obvious consequences. I've never seen her as a character who would abide anything other than fidelity, and now (if you're still in a relationship with her) that she's made it explicit, it's true that the MC's being awful to her if he fools around with Alana
or Haley. But he was no less awful to her any of the other times when/if he was with Diane, or Adriana, or Haley. It's also true that Alana and Haley definitely know about Sandra, and I think it's reasonable to assume Adriana would as well — I don't recall if Diane does or not — so they're equal participants in the deception. As others have said, it's really only crazy Lisa that's actually respecting the relationship, though even then I tend to doubt that Sandra would be okay with the ass-grabbing or
a live F/F sex show with a prostitute followed by hotel room masturbation while Lisa dirty talks him into orgasm. Anyway, the point is that Alana's no better or worse than Haley.
Again, though, I find this a net positive in terms of the story, and it's why...while I went ahead and replayed so I could see the Alana scene...I still have the MC with Sandra. Because this has the potential to end really badly, and I'm interested in seeing how well they (the dev team) handles it. It's not just about breaking Sandra's heart (or Haley's, if that's going to be a possibility), it's about pissing off his boss and actively breaking a promise to his boss/her uncle that he made just a little while ago. There could be some
amazingly ugly consequences to cheating on/breaking up with Sandra, and I'm eager to see how the story handles them.
