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There are some benefits to doing a sandbox style game and having the characters go down different paths on the side is definitely one of them. I admit it's a lot of fun to say have one lady go completely naked by player choice and then appear naked in other story routes and so forth.

That said, I also feel it causes laziness with devs if you can develop one popular thing and then leave other aspects and elements untouched. You could introduce one character and tease them for several updates and if somebody else is more popular with the players that character will feel so uneven development wise.

And the other thing with a sandbox is how grindy it can be. A lot of them feature day-night cycles, some events only happening during the day and on a certain day of the week, so you might just tab through every day trying to unlock those scenes, plus it's easy to overlook things this way.

I love the semi-linear approach with routes. At least this way every character can develop on pace with the story so it doesn't feel incoherent. I think if it ever came down to it you can always do secret paths and things like that.

Also tbh I mentioned this before but it's just so nice when you can enjoy story porn without running through hurdles haha. I still remember v0.02, I was enjoying drunk Peter shenanigans and when Lois calls you up, and the shock you get when Lois is riding her fat meat dildo. I basically pretty much knew to expect something really raunchy but that reveal blew my mind, and when you have an entire game where you can expect stuff like this just from natural progression it's just far more enjoyable.