I think both of our comments help describe the sum of what happened. For example, that "rapid fire interview" frequently cited in the reddit thread I posted happened two years(!) before NMS was released. It's not Hello Games' fault that it was so heavily-circulated two years later, long after those answers had changed. But I also would assert that Hello Games avoided the sort of explicit clarifications that would've diffused the bomb, and it was easy to interpret this as bad faith.

We can definitely agree that the gaming community does tend to overreact. Especially the modern gaming community with its hyper-fixation and echo chambers and far-reaching mainstream audiences. You don't just get lynched by a few nerds across a few phpbb forums anymore.

Hello Games struck hype gold at the expense of the deep dive scrutiny that gamers love, and I would largely credit the veil of mystery that they continued to sew right up to August 2016.