Let's do some basic maths, then, and let's see if you can follow: 3.5 years mean 3/3 of the game, so 1/3 would mean 1.2 years, or 14 months give or take. Add the 5 months of paid leave they both would be granted if they were on the payroll for someone else in their country (16 weeks for both parents, plus one extra month for breastfeeding only for Chestnut, the artist, plus at least another month for Pistachio due to his double hip surgery), and ta-daa! we are not-so-magically at the current state of affairs of 19 months of waiting.
Now, when you are on a paid leave you can't work at all, but when you get back to work you are expected to be working at your 100% from day one. In this case, they said they didn't stop working, but any adult person who's been around a newborn knows how things tend to go in their first year, so I'd think it would be fair to assume that taking care of a newborn didn't let them work at their 100% until way after that 5-months mark -and that they didn't even work at their 10% at best for many weeks in that period. So, all in all, I think we can equal the totally paralyzing effect that a 5-months paid leave would cause on any given project with that of the constant but slower pace of development this project has been experiencing from October 2022 to October 2023.
That's why I think this update is not taking THAT long as it may seem, all things considered - that is, of course, if they are not lying about the size of this update, and as I said they have a clean track in that regard and even their progress tracker checks out. About the pre-existing assets, according to you, it's the same as with the previous updates: they also had tons of assets (again, according to you) they reused, so in the end it seems to me that they are working more or less at the very same pace as before, and even faster if I'm right and they have to create more environments than you are imagining. But this we'll see for sure when the update drops: until then, it's obvious you have chosen your side and aren't willing to even consider the possibility of being wrong. And this leads us to the final point.
I didn't say you were butthurt by this game, I said yours was an 'irrational butthurt thinking' because it sounded like you were hurt by some other devs in the past, which has made you think all of them are the same, which is irrational due to being butthurt. Now it only sounds like you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, throwing accusations and assumptions without even taking a proper look at the available info beyond your own nose or the reasons others (I) give to you. Who is trolling at this point?