Agreed, that's a very tight path to walk. It's more of an added flavor than a main element, but it's one of the strengths of the early sections.
I think for this game to be fully realized, you'd want the Bangkok section to include a series of vignette missions where she does some spy-type stuff (whether for her agency, or getting co-opted by underworld elements, or both), with the hooker stuff (and accompanying corruption angle) as a persistent background.
I suppose that's pretty similar to some other games you might be familiar with.
That's exactly what is planned.
Bangkok should be freely accessible. That means the agent plans his daily routine himself.
For the first 1 or 2 weeks he will still be taken by the hand to explain and introduce some things, but afterwards it is up to the player himself what Kate does.
Of course she will have duties. It must fulfill its mission but also be present in the HCC. But it should be clear to everyone that her day will not be properly divided into 8h sleep, 8h HCC, 2h for meals, 2h for body care, 2h espionage and 2h free time.
Here it is now a matter of bringing various NPCs into play that can intersperse clues, start side missions, or simply be friends.
Kate can start her day with a visit to the beach or go shopping, or just stay in bed longer and get up at noon.
Of course, many actions have to be scripted. So you have to think about what could happen to her on the beach. To do this, a random system must be installed so that this happens irregularly. And then you have to consider how many ways Kate (and with the new engine) would interact with each other.
There are tons of ways to describe and in the end half of them will scream again on F95 that it is too little and that it takes too long to implement everything. But it is not only the beach that has to be considered, but also the 20 (?, Probably more) other locations and times of day.