I don't personally view (mis)guidance from a position of trust (even a person with his profession) as blackmail, but I suppose it could be one of those differences in perspective. Also she definitely seems to be a lot more willing than she used to be! But I will concede fact that I haven't yet viewed all the re-written Mel content, so I when I progress further I may see something that closer matches my view of blackmail, and I may see less willingness from Mel than she's shown so far since the changes. However, regardless of all that, I will say the interactions between him and Mel aren't initiated through blackmail as it used to be, and she is much more receptive to the main character's "suggestions" and advances to start out than she used to be, which I think are significant changes for people returning after such a long time to be made aware of.
And yeah, the previous version of her story was much more fleshed out at this stage, and had resulted in sex whereas so far this version of events hasn't reached that point. I wasn't personally super invested in her story before, so while I'm disappointed to see we lost some of her original content, I am curious to see if that changes with the new things the dev has planned for her.