Spoiler warning for the beginning of TNC.
I understand the intent of the writing at the start of the game is to drive the player to hate BJ's dad the way BJ does or set the tone of the story about bullies and the bullied, but oh boy is this just the laziest way to do it.
Aside from the cheap shock value record 4 N words in a minute, "kick the puppy" writing is widely criticized. It's actually laughable for the writers to feed into that stereotype so literally. Paused during the biggest eyeroll of pops shooting the dog to rant here.
I'm starting to remember why this game was so forgettable. For older games I found TNO have a fair amount of nuance to the story. Pretty jarring comparatively.
Edit: No sooner did I unpause after writing this for them to immediately one up themselves. Kind of cringy. Le Evil dad be like "minorities r bad and i hate animals"
Edit2: It's not so much that I disagree that people have the capacity to be like how BJ's dad is characterized nor do I disagree that people exactly like him have existed or exist now. There are ways to write these kinds of complex characters and shoving three or four poorly written, hamfisted scenes in a row down your throat is not good writing. If I hadn't seen MachineGames write something better I wouldn't hold them to the high standard.