This is mostly true but slightly off. Bo specifically was the one to over-complicate the floor in the first place, and left a lot more to piece together to make the floor make sense than usual and he's since said that it was a mistake. Then I assume Koda just kept losing interest with the convoluted task and turned toward less headache-inducing ones and kept doing that ad infinitum. The impression I've got while talking to him lately though is that the avalanche of bad press about 7F has caught up to him and he's getting through it, fucking finally.
To be fair there have been very few ToT updates since those side projects so there hasn't really been much opportunity lmao. The journal mechanic will be in there eventually for example but integrating something like that when 7F still isn't done would be pretty hard to justify.
Holy shit that drives me insane. It's bad enough just on its own but the fact that the first 6 floors have Ethan being a character and then he suddenly becomes a blank slate is so awful. I've argued with Koda about this a bunch of times, even as recently as a couple of days ago, and I'll be arguing it until I die of a brain aneurysm.
We sat down in VC a few days back and I made a few new components for him to work with and the last one I did was a cleaner version of Swan's ping-pong QTE thing. When I tested it I used 8F which I haven't played, and Ethan saying fucking /nothing/ when entering the floor had me screaming internally. Man was chatty as shit for 6 floors and now he's a mute! Where's his personality! Aaaaaa