the story promised to be dark and good old Cap delivered.
It did? When?
I saw the game promise "a bit of drama and sadness", and then it delivered
an underage girl getting randomly abducted, tortured for days, raped, and beaten to death. Those events seem a bit incongruent with the intended goal of "a bit of drama and sadness".
Perhaps you're referring to the fourth wall break when the MC says that the next scene is "by far the darkest part of my story" and then showing an event that doesn't add anything of value to the story, since nobody seems to care that
a girl was abducted, raped, and murdered.
When we first arrive with Julia at the hotel, Micaela says that she's surprised that "I can't believe you came back after what happened to you!", not everything that happened to
Elena, or to Brianna, but specifically to you. The author could've gone with a vague and generic full stop "everything that happened." But they chose to emphasize that it happened to the main character.
Micaela goes on to mention Sebastian, and Julia indicates that she know him too. This is a problem for the first path that I played through the game, where Brianna was the victim, because Julia claims that she knows the broad strokes about what happened here, so she should know about Brianna and therefore not want to go anywhere near this place. But she doesn't care. Micaela doesn't care. Susan doesn't care. There's even a scene later in the game where the present day MC phones up Sebastian to complain about how the trip is causing him "a lot more emotional turmoil than I expected", which is an absurd thing to say about visiting the place where Seb's kid sister was abducted, tortured, raped, and murdered. Then he asks if Sebastian wants to join him there.
The whole thing is ridiculous. It's like Brianna never even existed. There's no mention of her anywhere. Instead, it's Anna who everyone is making a big deal about. Sebastian, Micaela, and Susan are all shocked to hear that she is at the resort. They all act as if Anna wronged the MC in some way, and Susan even offers to have her thrown out if the MC desires. But nobody cares about Brianna. She's just a castaway character used as a stepping stone in the story about Anna and the MC.
The main character has a full blown panic attack when he first sees Anna at the hotel, and when he sees her again while out with Julia, she asks if Anna was involved in the events from his past trip, to which he says that Anna was "right at the epicentre of it, until she suddenly vanished into thin air." So the tragedy isn't centered on Elena or Brianna, but rather Anna? How?! She was only tangentially involved in the events we saw. And those were the events that the MC stated still plague his nightmares during his fourth wall break. But we don't see him care. Nobody cares.
This story simply doesn't work with either of these two girls being victimized in such a horrendous fashion, since the the main plot doesn't mention them at all. People are focused on Anna and the mysterious invitation. Even the main character downplays the tragedy when talking to Slyvia at the cabin. When she says "I know the horrid reputation of this place better than most", the MC think to himself; "Huh, is she talking about the whole kerfuffle from five years ago or did something else happen later as well?"
A kerfuffle? He reconnects with his long-lost childhood friend, only to have her be abducted for days, tortured, raped, and beaten to the point where she wishes she were dead, and he describes those events as a "kerfuffle"? As if it were a bunch of ball players shoving each other after a dirty play or something. There's just no gravity to the event. It's so incredibly isolated that it just makes the rest of the story worse. How am I supposed to care about Anna's plot when all I can think of is what happened to Elena?
The darkness in the game has no real purpose. It's just some edgelord dark to be dark nonsense. This isn't Deliverance, or American History X, or any other respected work of fiction where a violent rape is an important plot point. It's handled so poorly here that it ruins the entire game.
Which is a shame, since I really liked parts of it. Micaela was my favourite, and her story was quite realistic for the most part. She's stuck in a small town because she can't afford to leave, has issues with her sister who she sees as being favoured by her parents, and now has to help support her parents who aren't getting along. There's even an extra bit of drama about how her sister has had a crush on you for a while. But if you play your cards right, you can spark up a whirlwind romance with her even though you both know it's going to be hard to hold together.
Surprisingly enough, you can end the current version of the game on good terms with Micaela, which means a lot more has to happen between then and now, since we aren't yet a broken down shell of a person waiting around in a hospital glaring at nurses. So it looks like anyone who keeps playing the game will have to eat another shit-sandwich in the near future.
I think I'll pass on that.
I wouldn't want the happy and pleasurable moments to get too sweet.