I was there almoat two years, watching already the third development cycle. In two of them I tried to be optimistic, but knowing DPC now, I can,t maintain optimism - almost all development cycles are getting longer.
So it’s not a fact that in 2024 we will see an update at all. And this cycle is also characterized by the fact that it is the quietest. We receive almost no information. The latest figures were at the end of January.
This is not hate towards DPC, this is realism - he can't contain his inspiration and optimize the content quantity.
As much as it sounds logical and smooth, I still think that:
1. Development time can't increase more and more with each new episode.
2. Episodes sizes can't increase infinite or so significant to cause or be the reason to increase development time each time.
3. Memes about 5-6+ years (or even more) to complete the game are became boring already. It took him 2 years to shoot the first 2 seasons. Then it took him the same time to shoot the 2 episodes and Interlude. 65% of Season 3 to be precise. Any dev cycles scaling at the same pace sounds ridiculous and unrealistic. The worst thing could happen - release times will stick to 11-12 months till the end. But there're a lot of reasons for this time to decrease as well. Even 9 months cycles will cut about 1-1.5 years from those calculations.
4. Until complicated phases of EP9&10 development the only reason to increase dev time was the episodes size itself. But nobody complained till the development time of Interlude and EP9. It all started at that time. And now a lot of people can't shake it off and expect it to be the same or even worse just because they expect it and suppose it would be this.