You’re absolutely right about the dialog and I’m not sure why I forgot to include it in my post - that’s a pretty stupid decision on dev’s part, especially since there’s enough downtime that could be used for that purpose instead.
While mission design is pretty linear I never really found it to be a huge issue. It might be because I never expected any openness to begin with so anytime there was an option to avoid full-on combat seemed like a nice surprise. It doesn’t help that there isn’t much room for experimentation since enemies can be really deadly at times.
It’s definitely not a game for everyone and I can understand why you bounced off of it. I’ve been molded by jank so my tolerance to many of game’s issues is rather high. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for mediocre titles - I seem to drift towards them more than to polished, high-budget games.