I might have missed it but I didn't see anyone asking for a hundred million paths. Plenty of games offer 2-3 different story branches and it has worked very well for them indeed.
If by forcing you mean the mind control thing that Sharon does all the time, then I see nothing wrong with that. It's a staple of Vampire lore from books, to movies, to games. The OG of all vampire stories ever has it as its central premise after all.
Of course the player should be given the choice on how they want to play their vampire but that gets us right back to the first point.
The game itself keeps hinting on this type of situation all the time anyway, in this very update MC thought about the blood doll thing. Give the option to do it, it would be an improvement from the type of treatment she is currently getting.
You know what isn't a great idea? Making a narrative-focused game where the player has no real influence on the...narrative.
First, you can see the consequences of MC forcing himself on a random person from MC's point of view, Miri. He felt like shit. Yet, you would think it is in character to have he mind rape his best friend, that is in such a situation because himself was a selfish douchebag?
How would being a blood doll be an improvement? Andrew even tells you that by barely feeding him, he has remained enough freedom to even go against her will. So being a slave is better than being a person?
REMINDER: we all would love to be in their shoes, but the premise here is that what happened to Laurie was not a nice result.
About choices, you are given the choice to treat Carmen as food. A few times already, so it is likely that it ill eventually happen. But that is different from the very moment you met jump on her. Thing is, those different reactions given so far can still converge to a sufficiently nice relationship in which MC can still treat her as a prisoner and she responds back without absolute hate. You would think that if MC has been raping her she would react the same way? If that was the case you would be complaining why is the game unrealistic that Carmen is not acting differently for every single meaningful choice given.
There is a reason why we are not given that many choices that affect deeply the story so early. Imagine simply 3 of those 2 meaningful choices. You would have potentially 8 different paths. Add an extra choice 2 options choice, that is 16. You realize now how fast we get to a hundred million paths? IT is called the curse of dimentionality, given that history trees grow exponentially with the dimension of variables.
This game is focused on the story, not on fucking the girls. Many games that you see give you a lot of choices essentially are turning on and off girls around a central path, to the point in which you can even remove some characters, without affecting the overall story.. Obviously not all, but those that are successfully doing something like that are essentially developers that do this as only job (and earn more than a few thousand dollars). This game is a side project, with developers having other jobs.
So no, I prefer a good narrative focused story, even if said story remains linear for a big part of what is going on. In fact, I would rather have no choice and making a kinetic novel, if it would be long enough, complex and interesting, than to make choices that are off character or simply would make story advance slower to be believable. MC might be immortal, but I am not.
