The reason for that story-wise is that pearl resets are part of the game's canon, rather than being an abstracted concept. So, on each reset, Nichole would return to working for Awake-Tan for some period of time. Since the player can choose to level a character up and go straight to the barn scene without re-watching their stories, I wrote the scenes to generally reference their personality/plot fairly loosely since the player character will have seen them at all points of their story numerous times in-canon.
I will investigate Susan's lapdance scene not displaying correctly.
Wait, do pearl resets send the player back in time, or is the lone remaining hypnosis level so the harem doesn't notice how much time passed? I feel like either way, it just introduces more plot-holes: Could the mayor end up interviewing for the position Nichole still actively fulfills? Is it just a massive coincidence that it always rains (with the exact same traffic) when Raine reaches her 4th CG again? How does Clara's brainwashing work if she's leveled up before Mia or Candice (or Katelyn)? What does the non-hypnotized goddess think when the war suddenly starts up again? How do none of the elves think to use this time-travel power against Helen/the player?
P.S. Olivia's lap-dance has the same issue as Susan's, by the way: it's in the folder as sprite-4538-0, but the cutscene just shows the default mall background.
The way pearl resets work is that it takes everyone the player has power over and "resets" them back to the state they were in when first controlled. They are still controlled enough that they do not notice inconsistencies such as that Anne and Olivia couldn't have been enslaved on the same day etc. The goddesses do actually have unique dialogue depending on who you enslave first or if you have both of them already. For things like when a scene involves other characters, it canonically takes place after you've prepared the other characters for the scene, and a convenience for the player that you don't have to level up the other characters for it first. For things like the traffic being the same in the background, that's an inherent limitation of the cost of getting art assets. it'd be a waste to commission a bunch of variant car patterns.
I'll check out Olivia's lapdance as well then. I'll get those fixes up as soon as I can.
I did initially assume those were abstracted/player-convenient/cost-convenient choices, but was confused why said convenience didn't extend to the dance/barn scenes, hence my first comment. I think the best compromise would be to have Helen explain it (and how to see them) in an interrupt-cutscene the first time you get a character to level 300 (or whenever their pole-dance scenes unlock); that way, not only is their place in the timeline explicit, but it also rectifies an earlier issue I brought up about how those cutscenes are too well hidden to begin with.
By the way, is the rain in Raine's 4th CG also an art convenience and she just thinks it's raining sometimes? My main question about that was the weather being the same, after all. And how does Susan's uniform get unburned? If she just straight-up has a second set, maybe you could add it to the background of her 2nd CG as an Easter egg.
The auditorium/mall/barn scenes are meant to be vague about when they happen, so that characters who have interesting concepts in their stories can have their specific version of the scene happen at a convenient point. If I made the scenes all happen at a hard firm point in the story, a lot of the characters would end up being pretty samey because technically after their last story unlock, nearly all the girls are comfortable nudists.
For Raine's 4th CG its not an art contrivance or a coincidence; it's more of, the scene is triggered by it raining when she's controlled enough for it to happen. Susan's clothes are repaired when her condition is reset. As a general rule, the reset arranges things to be least disruptive possible, and smooths over what can't be altered by making the person reset unaware of the difference caused.
Thanks for responding. Small clarification: I meant, when Helen explains how to find/see those cutscenes, she would clarify that all three types of scenes (auditorium/mall/barn) take place at different, varying points in their individual arcs instead of all happening after their final CG or at a specific point in the timeline--or even sequentially among themselves (since Nichole's barn scene has to take place before almost all her other cutscenes). She could follow up by saying something like "so don't worry if it seems like your control over them has waned; that's just a natural side-effect of pearl resets!" The only hard firm point is when the explanation itself shows up: once the player levels up any character enough to unlock that person's auditorium scene. Does it sound like something you'd be willing to implement now?
I think adding a clarification in-game about it would really only make people more confused. By calling specific attention to it, it will prompt people to put more thought into it, and given how text is as a medium for communication, there will be people who misunderstand the explanation and get confused.