What the game is actually about

What the game is actually about — underneath the microwave and the CRT tube — is the cost of refusing to let anyone go. Okabe's mad-scientist bit is a coping posture, and the story strips it down one iteration at a time.

By the back half you're no longer watching a time-travel plot; you're watching a boy learn that every worldline he rejects has to be carried with him anyway. The true route is not a reward for clever play. It is the route where he stops asking for a different worldline and accepts this one.