Sure, I suppose that he could have faked all of that, but faking it would have taken as much work as doing it.
I am not saying that Crush is faking it, and I am not trying to be passive-aggressive, but just for the sake of popping your bubbles a little more than
Ripe already did, faking it definitely does not take that much effort.
I could come up with 1-page report on what I did this week with detailed schedule and contents in less than an hour without doing any of them. All I have to do is work just for a few days right before the due date, and tell people that despite the lack of result, well, I worked hard! I could keep doing it, and when things get a little fishy fishy, simply spice things up a little with tears on my cheek along with a comment that things are not going my way, again, despite my effort, and that my self-esteem is getting low, things are rough, etc... You know, appeal to their compassion to gain credibility by "opening up". This is pretty much what all clever procrastinators do. To say that this is a hard thing to do is straight up being naïve.
I've been there. I've grown up under rich, but extremely strict and demanding parents, and I faked a lot of things throughout my teenage years. I used to make reports of what I studied by specifically recording detailed pages and the name of some random chapters and equations on my textbook to demonstrate my studying effort. My favorite part was shedding tears while "opening up" that I hate myself because I feel so dumb getting B+ even though I did nothing but study soo haard. That would always catch them by surprise and get me out of trouble for a while. In real, I was almost living in Karaoke, Billards and PC Cafe after school. How did I get B+? I merely crammed for a week before the exam.
Anyways, I personally do trust Crush, but not because of his weekly reports (which are, let's face it, more like personal diary than meaningful developer diary) and diligent community communication. Remember, this is sort of things that PR/community managers do. You don't need an effort or knowledge of a developer to do it. You are familiar with the infamous meme "we have our best men working on it", right? No. I trust him because the contents already out there and his writing styles in the game actually reflect his obsessive personality: Obsession to write every sentences into perfection, obsession to make a flawlessly flowing plot and coming up with game progression so orderly structured that Germans would get jealous.