Interesting post. Particularly with that detail about the ?Fort Knox? place near the Liibrary ... and what about the Library itself, while we're on that subject?
I take your point about some one-sided development of the game, where ideally you'd wish for a fuller evolution, in more directions, more locations ... (and I'd add, a bit more in the way of real hopes for Kate?). ...
Like a shrub with massive development of some branches, other branches dormant, stunted-looking, dead or just sleeping?? ... and overall, a plant taking on not quite as healthily all-sided or full-bodied a shape as you might wish.
Surely two factors are at work there?:
One, the sheer time & work it must take to build up such a monster game - with quite a few monsters in it, but that's just a pun. Especially considering the more interesting computer games are not "clickthroughs", but ones with "audience participation", i.e. quite a wide range of options/decisions players can make, there's huge capacity there at this stage. Massive volumes of text, of graphic and plot material. And, surely, it must generally be much easier to add a limited number of extensions on various already constructed areas - and locations, activity types, characters - than to construct and elaborate entirely new ones?
Two, commercial realities and existential necessities (aka: "we gotta eat!"). A game whose development relies on sponsors - as most do, obviously - surely has to seek a bit to give the people what it seems, at least, a majority want .... Feedback from users, and esp patrons, matters: not only to give developers some vital encouragement that they're not going nuts in a space-warp vacuum, but to give some broad-based idea of the sort of things people like & want to see more of, and what they find boring or irritating. And so there has to be some "LCD" at work there surely. I don't mean Liquid Crystal Displays, but the mathematical sense of LCD. On the lines of: "People call out for more scary vampires with bad breath, we give 'em more terrifying vampires with ferocious bad breath - so, hold that Listerine" ... (Other anti-halitosis products are available.)
So I sympathize with the difficulties, and hazards, the creators must have.
The main thing I'd like to see at this stage - I hope this doesn't seem hypocritical as the virtual sex is eyebrow-raising escapism - is a break or two for Kate, as possible outcomes within/to the game.
You can't please everyone, also, you can overdo a good idea, as a couple of old fables with asses (the ones with long ears, this time) pointed out, ages ago.
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~ ~ ~ Sex (in virtual form, hopefully, when it gets really lurid, and/or degrading) sells. And sensation too.... But you can also alienate increasing numbers of people, no, if you produce too much remorseless, fiendish crushing of poor human sods - sorry, I meant poor human SOULS - that people called out for more of, the loudest shouts (after all) not always being the most representative of what most people actually enjoy, even in fantasy. And on the other hand, maybe not enough (practically viable) doors towards varieties of "hope [that] springs eternal in the human breast" .... whether that breast happens to be female, male, both or neither in particular.
I mean, call her naive, deluded, will-broken or whatever you like, Kate is still - just about - an embodiment of likeably resilient, buoyantly fallible human optimism, in a world of manipulative, deceitful, destructive horror. But that world seems to be closing in on her, more and more. Hence my point. Or is it a plea?
As for the reading matter in Kate's room ... I dunno, I wouldn't sweat that bit. Probably that's just an idea some fool (*cough*) suggested, as a way Kate can pass an hour or two without having to switch back and forth between streets.
True, she does suddenly gain an impressive private library of her own - did all those books come from the old gent in the back alley? (Kate must have hired a delivery service!)
Given that the sight of the Library gives her the willies (in the "scared" sense, not the anatomical version), it seems nevertheless our MC's a good, voracious, even highly erudite reader, when she feels like it - actually I like that, as ever, good on the ever-likeable figure of Kate! - and personally, I wouldn't worry too much what contents interest her. Just as long as we don't have to read too much of that sometimes speculative theory ourselves (... he remarked, drily) ...
