Agree with your here. Every new chapter makes me realise that a lot of choices in previous chapters don't actually matter in the long run, which like you said, is probably an afterthought by Eva. There seems to be a lot of streamlining in recent chapters, specifically ch 8 and 9. Ch 8 simplified the Holly Lena conundrum for Ian, this one did the same for Alison and Cindy it looks like.That's been my guess. I think the same likely goes for a number of other paths now and in the future, unless/until Eva more clearly outlines a future path tree and gets more help with development. Honestly, as disappointed as I am with the limit of some options here, I still prefer it to disjointed, immersion-breaking text inevitable from creating too many paths without enough time to reconcile the dialogue and internal thought processes for each, as we've seen even more in other recent chapters. Even if that means my preferred route details may be impossible now.
I'd rather have a more consistent game that doesn't hit my wants than a disjointed mess that gives me every route I was hoping for, since the latter breaks the spell of the narrative and is no fun to play through IMO.
It's why I think the game might be nearing its end a lot sooner than we think. I get the impression Eva is really picking up the pace and getting key events out of the way as quickly as possible. The scope she originally envisioned for the game is way too big for her, so she is making do with these simplifications.