It really is amazing that there are so many options that people will never encounter. Kim was the most important thing to me in the game. The game wasn't about the case or communism or getting Cuno on a better track or the encroaching Pale. It was about Kim. I wrote this at the time:

I know you can do playthroughs where you're dismissive of Kim, where you disappoint him into the distance; but I could never. Not even in something that's *just a game*.

I played a full-send communist this time, but I didn’t want to be an asshole to kim. so I just brushed past his misgivings and kept yapping. I found myself shaking my head at his centrist leanings a lot. but eventually kim started letting me cook and trusting my process

I like to think that in the end, Kim eventually came to respect my Heavy And Constant drug use, so long as I used it to solve crime in the wildest manner possible.

yeah in my playthrough, at the end kim offered a full-throated defense of me and my wild chemically assisted methods, calling me the greatest detective he’d ever seen