On the topic of MC's characterization, I agree it's poorly done and inconsistent. I have praised Summer's Gone several times previously, however that shouldn't stop legitimate criticism. MC's character is by far the major problem with the story.
MC in Chapter One is presented as Generic Nihilistic Badass Antihero™. He is completely callous towards everyone, and the most egregious thing is when takes the gun from Ms Marla without missing a step like the complete Badass™ he is, and he then (can) shoots the gun at Ms Marla which luckily has blanks. So he was perfectly fine with straight up murdering someone apparently. Later on this incident is barely mentioned and more or less handwaved away.
Then in Chapter Two and Three, MC is just more or less a moody edgy emo virgin teenager with a traumatic past event, with his Badassery™ downgraded from awesome and real to purely performative. This is good. It is far more grounded and fits the story better. I'm sure we all knew some edgy emo when we were teenagers.
In OceanLab's defence, I know they took over from someone else after Chapter One so Chapter One doesn't completely reflect their creative vision, and knowing OceanLab's approach to WIAB, they probably want to overhaul Chapter One at some point.
In my humble opinion, MC's character should be focused on the edgy emo teenager. MC's nihilistic outlook should be superficial. He doesn't really believe the crap he spouts ("your words mean nothing to me"), but are purely a defence mechanism. As the story progresses the facade that MC has should crack (already happening ingame so far) but I would like to see other characters actively call MC out on his fake nihilism. Acts of Badassery™ should be out of the question, and the greatest extent should be teenage fistfights. Also his new haircut looks stupid.
As to the above complaints of being unrealistic and contrived, I both agree and disagree. Frankly, there's a much larger meta-level discussion to be had on the quality of writing in erotic/romantic/porn VNs generally. To summarise, the overwhelming majority of VNs have atrocious-to-poor writing. I can count on one hand the amount of games on this website that I consider to have "good" writing. Understandably, this is in large part because the major selection pressure for this broad genre of games is jerk-ability rather than good writing. They're basically just vehicles to get people to orgasm. As such, erotic VNs have a lot in common with trashy romance novels that are ever popular (you know what I'm referring to) and have a similar quality of writing.
The reason I bring this up is because it makes it extremely difficult to evaluate the quality of writing of erotic VNs. On one hand, I want to evaluate them relative to their peers. On the other hand, I want to evaluate them to narratives more generally ("objectively" evaluate the writing). Summer's Gone is absolutely one of the best written stories when compared relatively to its peers. When compared to other mediums or "objectively", ...ehhh not so much. It's not bad. It's also prudent to acknowledge some of the criticisms being levelled at Summer's Gone are more accurately criticisms of tropes and conventions in erotic VNs more generally. For example, the criticism that the "colleges/universities are not really colleges". It's true, the trope is that the colleges in erotic/romantic VNs are weird high school/college hybrids. I guess this is in part to skirt around age limits ("they're all 18! They're in college"), but also because drama is easier to write when everyone acts like they're in high school, but old enough to act independently when the narrative calls for it. Best of both worlds. Similar tropes occur in tv shows and films.
In conclusion, the writing of Summer's Gone is good even if it's bad because almost all other VNs are complete shit by comparison.
TLDR; MC's character is inconsistent and needs to be fixed. Quality of writing in erotic VNs generally is shit, by this standard Summer's Gone is very good, so it's hard to evaluate criticisms fairly.
EDIT: Just wanted to add, because otherwise this post was really quite negative, that OceanLab's renders are really really fucking good by any standard, and actually utilises cinematography, a rare thing indeed. Can't say enough good things about the visuals.
