Well, everyone is entitled to his own opinion. I don't judge anyone, wouldn't say people were "upset" - more like facepalming and pointing at "the idiot" who did not like something in the game they admire.
Your comparison does not hold water you know... full and complex open-world games like The Witcher cannot be compared to a small-time indie-developed renpy AVNs with quirky sandbox elements.
In Witcher if I am presented with a choice I have a chance to fight and win or lose but, ultimately, the outcome depends on my skill in fighting and maybe my equipment. If I lose, I go again until I can fight my way out of it.
In this indie AVN I am presented with a choice that is not actually a choice - it's either you pick "this line of text" or its game over.
Can you see the difference?
I somewhat see the difference when it comes to combat, but even in games like the Witcher and the other ones I listed there are moments where choices are given but if you pick the "wrong" one it can end in a player death.
I can't remember if it was in one of the Dragon Age games or one of the Witcher (the first one if it was a Witcher game) games but there was a scene with a witch who makes you pick a position and if you live, she helps with something. You basically had two choices, right or left and if you were wrong you died. It was also a random choice the game made each time the scene played so if you died and reloaded it might not be the same as before. There was a specific trait that if you had you could tell which one she poisoned. But if you didn't have that trait then it was fifty-fifty, live or die and it came down to a moment of dialog choice. (Hell, it might have even been Dragon's Dogma. I've played a lot of fantasy games...)
One of the Metal Gear Solid games has a moment as well where you are a prisoner and if you pick one option you are left there and die, and if you pick the other you get out. This is not uncommon even in big games.
In fact, being forgiving in the bigger games should make you even more forgiving here. This is an independent developer, not a big team who can code and plot and render for every way to solve a problem.
I plan to play the update tomorrow after finishing the game I'm in the middle of right now. So, I don't know exactly how this scene plays out, but from what I've read it seems like you are presented an option to submit to someone's questing or not. Something along those lines.
The developer seems to have wanted to give you a choice to show that the world in dangerous and you're still a newb. Yeah, you have this power that can make you amazing, but you don't know how to use it yet. Again, not having played the scene yet I imagine that is the goal, to show that, "Yeah, you have power, but until you learn how to use it, you better be damn careful... otherwise you'll be killed."
I don't mean to frustrate you, you are obviously allowed to do whatever you like, I'm just intrigued by this conversation. Your justifications are interesting to me, and I've never talked to or heard from someone who thinks this way before.