Currently some scenes are completely avoidable and some are "you didn't see it so it might not have happened" like the poison dart related stuff in the second town. I personally quite like when it's done that way, bad things happen (or do they?) but you don't know unless you load a save to check both options. I understand that it can ruin the fun for people who like to do purist playthroughs but it's what I like more.
The "beast girl" stuff plays a pretty important role! No spoilers.
For the gallery, most of it is placeholders. I'm also a little bit inconsistent when I sometimes bunch up multiple scenes into one NPC. I was thinking to just visually overhaul it at the end when everything is done but I feel like filling up the empty spots with more scenes is more fun.