Honestly if this ever becomes the official excuse they go with I just know it's not true. I can understand it being a little harder on artists since they have to make new art and there are the animations that go with it too but writers absolutely cannot complain about having to plot a game, a visual novel on top of that, with multiple routes and endings. I mean, what did they expect? It just seems lazy from my point of view, especially since they already have the basic engine figured out that they use to make all the games I ever played from them. Maybe it was just a typical content-chopping from the higher ups.
In any case, this game could have been better, not only story-wise but also from a gameplay standpoint. The game had a hard time loading and saving on my computer and whenever I overwrite a save it chokes the process completely which I find super weird since I never had that happen with their other games.