I would encourage you to do a speed run, but pay attention to a few things:
1) Is Veronica's claims matching her actions?
2) Is Veronica transparent on how she's running the Gambit (where she's getting instructions, timetable)?
3) With Veronica running the Gambit, is she enforcing fairness: ensuring that everyone has an equal playing field, equal information, and is she disciplining cheating? Is one candidate/team receiving favorable treatment due to Veronica's actions/inaction?
4) Does she have a favored candidate, and possibly rigging the game to ensure only her desired candidate has a chance of winning?
5) Is this candidate completely independent of Veronica, or has she been directly and indirectly influencing/maneuvering her candidate's direction
6) Would this "influence" disappear once the candidate wins, or will she be an effective puppet for Veronica?
7) If Alessandra kills Veronica during the Gameshow, will Veronica's candidate become the most powerful? Will she keep the power/advantages she had while Veronica was alive, or will those evaporate?
8) Veronica claims that she doesn't want the power, but who inside KG is more powerful than her, and would she become more or less powerful if her chosen candidate wins?
9) Is Veronica truly capable of allowing anything to go outside or contrary to her will? If not, what does she do to ensure it bends so, and how does she react when it doesn't?
10) Who does everyone fear (both within and without KG), and why would all of these people fear such an "honest" person?
11) Despite departments and loyalties, how many of the staff never report to Veronica, or otherwise never fall under her chain-of-command?
Oh man, you have a hate boner for Vernoica huh??
Okay, so keeping in mind I only played the dom/good MC path, let me try to answer...
I was gonna answer point by point, but forget about that because you are looking at the whole thing from a distorted perspective and asking a lot of weird and irrelevant questions, so let's get to the heart of it: What is going on in the story?
Well, there are two basic "problems" in the story, the first and direct one is the power struggle for succession of the Karlsson Group's leadership. The second one, that has been revealed little by little, is that the world is basically fucked, and they need to find a solution for the survival of the human race at this point.
Veronica is basically trying to either fix the world (which she calculates is pointless) or save humanity with her secret island project... she's playing for MUCH bigger stakes than just the fate of the KG (Karlsson Group). Is she manipulative?? Well, yeah, of course she fucking is, she needs to be if she's gonna have a chance of pulling off her true goals, specially when she has to basically fight against a bunch of power hungry evil people.
We're still not a 100% sure of what the Gambit really is or how it was stipulated or how "honestly" is it being run to really question what Veronica's role is and how well she's behaving I guess... but like I said, she obviously has ulterior motives, everyone in the board does, and they are ALL involved in the Gambit... EVERYONE is trying to manipulate the outcome in their favor, so trying to paint Veronica as an evil manipulator honestly rings hollow in light of the circumstances.
Yes, there seems to be a desired outcome that is shared by many players/factions in which either Olivia, Kane or both take over, and Veronica seems to want Olivia to take over at the very least, Kane's role is a bit more complicated.
But anyways, the point is, while everyone else is playing Game of Thrones, Veronica is basically trying to save humanity, and so of course yeah, she will do whatever it takes to achieve her goals... does that make her evil though?
