I didn’t follow the game in early access before this year, but this is the first misstep I’ve seen from them on messaging so far. Having a large section of the game ship with scripting issues and following it up with an abbreviated ending wasn’t what was “planned long ago.”

If I’m being totally honest, this reads like someone high up was annoyed (or embarrassed, more likely) by the cut content discussion and felt the need to respond. The rest of the paragraph is where they should have left it, because they’re right: there’s enough content, and every game has cuts. The number of loose ends that weren’t tied up makes it a little more obvious than usual, sure, but that’s the game that was shipped. Developers usually don’t comment on this sort of thing, and for good reason.

They’re doing everything right with what they have at this point in the release cycle. That doesn’t need to be accompanied by a ham-fisted attempt to spin the cut content discussion into fixes for Minthara, or borderline arrogant messaging in general. Just lay out what you have planned. People will be happy.