Incoming mental health issues, burn out, loss of interest, abandoned in a few months.
There is absolutely NO reason to remaster the first Episode. Could also be that someone on his team left and he has to hire someone to fill that role and so he's buying time by redoing the renders.
Whatever the reason, the tale tale signs of a game dying is exactly this, time between updates and then remaster a story that's already progressing. You only reMASTER once you've MASTERED the game (i.e. completed it), we've not even got a completed game yet how can you even think about remaking some old scenes.