This game is going in the entirely wrong direction. In the last few updates, all player agency has been removed, replaced by a completely linear story where you are supposed to go along with even the most outrageous of suggestions, regardless of how little sense they make.
It is an enormous shame, because I was actually quite impressed when I first played the overhauled version of the game a couple of years ago. I felt it had taken a much more balanced approach: the agent was generally not pushed into being a whore by the agency, and although there were some forced scenes (most notably the interview with Connor), they were not completely illogical.
A few shifts in, though, and the agent has seemingly accepted a number of conditions that would be unimaginable before taking the job. She has accepted that Connor will use her after every shift, she has accepted she will have to sleep with just about anyone to fit in with her bar girl friends, and she is being blackmailed by the bar's management. All while being encouraged to continue by the agency and, by the looks of things, enjoying it herself.
This makes zero sense. We are talking about a highly skilled, highly trained, intelligence agent, that was presented with a job of working topless in a bar. But I am supposed to believe that after only 4-5 shifts she has unquestioningly accepted that she will need to prostitute herself to continue the mission? Even though, in a real scenario, this would be avoided at all costs? I have no way of outsmarting anyone, any choice you make to avoid something is immediately punished, and we are resorting to the cheapest rationale one could ever come up with for motivating certain scenes: "do this or lose your job".
This issue with all of this is that it is immersion-ruining. I want to make the agent a bargirl just as much as anoyone, but it has to be natural. It has to be believable. And when you force the agent down a certain path, you lose all credibility. Had this been a real situation, any forced sex, any blackmail, would instantly backfire and the agent would be asked to be taken out of the mission. This creates a huge dissonance between what happens in the game and what you actually think should happen, with the unfortunate implication that you can't enjoy the content that is there.
It is a large tragedy, because this game does have a lot of potential. However, it is being wasted through poor execution. To salvage what remains to be salvaged, player agency needs to be increased, and the game must regain its more balanced approach. The agent has to slowly start stretching her boundries and slowly start to change her mindset, rather than accepting to be raped from day one.
