I wouldn’t agree with the assessment of the main characters being a-holes. Maybe in the carefully cut clips devoid of the full context.

In the first scenes, the protagonist is indeed somewhat mean to her crew, but the game immediately tells you as much, to show you that abusing the special abilities, Vox, is not a good idea. From there, it’s up to the player whether to listen to every dialogue to the end or to interrupt, whether to avoid using the charged Vocals or to use them frequently. Going by the post-chapter stats at the end of one particular chapter, most players choose to avoid them at least in that instance.

It’s a lot more nuanced than ever presented in the hate videos or reviews. Like the protagonists being deliberately flawed, the villains (or the people presented in those reviews as villains) are also portrayed as human: misinformed but not inherently evil; capable of empathy and questioning their beliefs; seemingly caricature at first, but then showing a different side.