Many choices in the game don't have consequences aside from the brief burst of variation that follows it. Some people would say this is bad game design, that all choices should have some impact, but I don't agree with that. Sometimes we throw in choices to let the player roleplay how they see fit, and some times the choices are precisely because we know they can check what the other branches are like. The differences in reactions between each branch can reveal important details about the characters.
And, sometimes, the choices are there to plant ideas in the player's head. In the case of the prologue they set the mood — the fact that you are given the choice at all to go with "science explains things/I've seen something supernatural" clues the player into what sort of story this is. If the MC answered this on his own it wouldn't stick in the player's mind so well. Same with Greta, her question is planting the idea that the hotel's powers can be used in creative ways for creative goals.
These choices are setup for the choices that do matter, which often times are the ones you'll do with the management mechanic.
It's hard for me to give you a full idea of the MC. There's a sort of trick going on with him, actually. We frame him as a blank slate self-insert, but as a writer I think that is fundamentally impossible to realize. No character can be a blank slate, except a literal vegetable. You see, whenever we make a "blank slate" what we are actually doing is picking a few traits and making them vague, while picking about a dozen of well-defined traits and pushing them away from the spotlight. For example, Link, Samus, Mario, even the protagonists of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, are "blank slates" but they are brimming with character — because what they do says a lot about them.
We have this going with the MC. In truth, the MC comes across as a sort of undefined person, but there's a lot to him that we just don't bring to attention. A few guidelines for the MC:
- The narration should never say what the MC is thinking or feeling (but sometimes we let it slip, and that's a mistake.) What we can do is have the narrator go on about what someone would think, in abstract, but that's not necessarily what the MC is thinking.
- The MC is a generally competent person. He's not necessarily excellent, but he's smart and skilled enough that he can at least be expected not to make things worse. Socially, he's outgoing when he wants to but generally reserved. He doesn't need to resort to violence because he can talk his way out of trouble.
- The MC is never lecherous, or a pervert. Even in his most sexually charged moments, there has to be a sense of class, sensibility, elegance to him.
- The MC's physical actions should, when applicable, convey a sense of subdued grace. This is often done by invoking some mythological and poetic motifs. He is not a clumsy person.
- The MC is a profoundly humane and understanding person. He is capable of interpreting and understanding even very complex people, if given enough information to work with.
- He is a man of action and communicates with deeds more than with words, and there is a high chance that he worked as a detective (or something like it) sometime in his life.
These things may not seem like much when presented in bullet points, but together they paint a somewhat well defined person. The MC, you could say, is a humanist both philosophically and metaphysically. He has made his life's mission to help lost people by giving them the basic conditions to flourish and heal emotionally. He believes in human rights, and in doing his part to make sure they are respected. He is morally upstanding, but not moralistic or imposing of his sense of ethics. He understands the importance of what he's doing, to others and Asterion, and when the narration is not aimed on him he probably gets emotional sometimes. And he has nothing, nothing, magical about him: he is human, and that alone is more than enough.
There's also another trick we do, but this only applies for players who navigate successfully through a lot of the game's hidden challenges: in truth, the MC has independent thought and there is a gap between what he thinks and what the player thinks, much like there is a gap between the player and Pedro. There are rare moments which few players will see where the narrative does not give the player a choice because the MC and Pedro already made a significant, substantive, deliberate choice for themselves.
So, is he truly a blank slate? Is it possible to write a true blank slate? Because when we put it like this, the MC is actually a well-defined character, but we omit the most obvious signs that this is the case.
Mind you, this ties with the rollback thing. It may not seem like it, but Minotaur Hotel is a detective story, except the real mysteries aren't expressly stated in the narrative itself. The rollback is there to let you play the detective and investigate things...
Now, look back at the guidelines for the MC's writing. Do you see the part I italicized?
We keep the rollback so the player can be like a detective; think ahead, build a hypothesis, test it as many times as necessary. The mechanic is there to push you towards trying to understand and investigate what's going on. The reason why you can forgive and hug Argos is to push you towards a more humane mindset. So, in truth, with all those things and more we are trying to project the MC's characterization onto the player.
Sorry if I rambled. I was trying to answer this question before having dinner, and I think the hunger made me a bit disorganized. Hopefully this makes sense.