I actually kinda like the different colors to denote different forms of mind control. The first one was an item. idk, maybe it was some kind of frequency emitter thing. The second one was a drug that appears to fuck with the prefrontal cortex and make one vulnerable to suggestion and conditioning. Based on what was shown for the next chapter, I'm gonna guess some form of magic and supernatural stuffs. And we have no indication on the origin of what Mahir's mind control (red eyes) was.
I'm a little worried for Mezz, knowing that there's such a dangerous individual stalking him. Despite him being cocky to enemies at times, he's a pretty nice person over all when you look at his interactions with the various npcs around the Havens and toward most of the Gutter patrons. We even see the people in the haven thanking him for his help. I think the fact that he's not a stupid asshole makes the scenes of him getting slowly broken feel more impactful. Some of those endings are pretty sad ;_;
I mean yes, but the whole point of this series, more or less, is sadism on the part of the player (or masochism, if you're self-inserting). It's about watching the confident hero get his shit kicked in. Also, you get to have your cake and eat it too, because there's three different ways you can have stuff play out: "bad" dead ends, the pure route where he wins, and the trained routes where he "wins."
But yeah, he's a good guy. That's deliberate and important, because it wouldn't be as much fun to mess with him if he was some cardboard character. Grinding a person down until they're just a sextoy isn't, as you put it, impactful if they weren't really much of a person to begin with. They have to have something to lose: power, dignity, friends, a potential lover teammate. But, for the pure cinnamon buns out there, there IS eventual Scratch content planned that will ONLY be available on the pure route, so there will be some actual content there and it won't just exist for the sake of contrasting the "bad" ends.
Oooo that's great to hear! I appreciate that you'd get something for making it through relatively unscathed, even if the game is more geared toward mind-break/humiliation S&M type stuff (which I also enjoy, don't get me wrong). I like to 100% these types of things, so the Scratch stuff will definitely be welcome (liked him when I first saw him, and I love his character concept). I also Iron Man mode'd the second game and got through it without getting submissioned a single time to see if there was anything from it (And just for the challenge of it. I gotta say I felt a little cheated having all my Dazzle Blasts taken before the final boss. It was hard getting to the point with some spare cans and I wanted it to pay off by shredding Khazeem.) Amidst all the rape and domination, it's nice to see the haven being a ray of harmony in the crapsack nanobotic hellworld that serves as the setting, so I'm all for endings being made available where you make it back there.