Heya,
So I'll try and respond to this the best I can. Yes, the beginning will be restructured as the first portion of the game was mirror after other game norms at the time and I don't really like the feel. However, I did a poll on this awhile back and it's honestly about 50/50. About half of the players at the time actually preferred the repetition part because they wanted to try to "solve" it and figure out how to progress the story. However, I've made the decision to change it and make it more narrative and less game.
That being said, the dialogue that you find "cringey" really won't change. Actually, if there's anything that I'm the most proud of about the game, it's the dialogue. To answer your question about there being people out there who actually talk like this: yes... thousands of them for sure but probably closer to millions. The dialogue structure is actually a mix between various slang because I wanted to bridge the age gap for players. There's references on multiple age groups here and I like that because it broadens the audience. Perhaps the biggest counter to your suggestion is that you call the dialogue "unrealistic" and that's the first time i've heard that since the game was created. I actually have thousands of messages of players who can relate to specifically the parts you don't. The most common word I hear from people is "realistic." Which brings me to one of the ultimate purposes of the game. Zack's character, in particular, is built to be stubborn to the reader because he's a manifestation of someone who is uncomfortable with himself. He fights against the grain of acceptance repeatedly. This is what anxious people do and I wanted to give that a realistic voice--both to validate those who live like this but also to give those who don't an idea of how difficult this journey is for others. Basically, the "cringey" moments are the things I get the most fan mail about and it's usually people saying how much they can relate to the characters. Is the dialogue awkward at times? Hell yes. They're 18 and 19 years old with limited experience. They're going to act cliche at times and other times inconsistent. They're going to do/say embarrassing shit because that's what you do when you're 18 or 19 and you don't have any experience. I'm simply normalizing this because it's a step that people who have no experience at this need to get past. It's also something that people without anxiety probably won't understand. It's easy to become frustrated with a character who is less comfortable or resistant to doing things that come easy for you naturally. And for some people, seeing fictional characters do it, has allowed many players/readers to ascertain the courage to do so in their own lives and for that I'm extremely grateful that the game had the intended impact. That's what it's written that way. I seriously struggled with my own sexuality and that's what you're seeing Zack's character do. It's just not that easy for some people. I've never ever pictured Zack being "cringey" or whiny though--maybe that's just a matter of taste. His ton to be was away authentic... like he's realistically torn at several times during the game.
The other point you made about character customization is something that would be nice to include but it's pretty much impossible. I honestly wanted to do something like this in the begining. You reference Coming Out on Top (COOT) as an example and to compare it to this format is unrealistic. COOT uses sprites. Of which you simply toggle the body hair once and it's on the sprite every time it slides onto the screen. Basically it's super easy to customize things like that. For me to change body hair, I would have to redo thousands of pictures. So if the game has 4000 renders of Braden now, I would have to redo all 4000 pictures again with body hair. Then render all 4000 a third time with a different hair style with body hair. Then render all 4000 a fourth time with the different hair style but maybe the original body hair. Now times all this by two because you would have the same options for Zack. I could literally spend a year of development making mods for body hair and still probably not touch the surface for customization. To further complicate this, I would have to code in every possible variable for each type of hair style/body hair into every line of code for every picture. The current build of the game (v018.2 has 35,000 lines of code). Adding in mods like that would probably double it at least and writing the game this far has taken me around 2.5 years. To add Body hair to COOT, you make one hair overlay for each sprite (which was like 5 guys) and then drop an overlay on each CG (so probably like 30 pics and you're done).