They announced plans to use new generation of graphics APIs a long time ago. It's only now they made it clear they prefer Vulkan to DX12. So I'd say it's their work as usual, except they at last made the clear choice (or at least made it public, they probably chose Vulkan in the past already).

You shouldn't be downvoted - that is a legit criticism of a game that has been rather long in development. At least it's not development hell like DNF or Daikatana, the people building it seem to genuinely make progress, even if they rebuild parts more often than might be necessary. The question is if these symptoms will sink the ship before they reach shore - their situation is obviously different, but no matter whether you throw a bowling ball, or a paper airplane, both eventually hit the ground.