Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

tl;dr: the "panic button" is asking the senior level designer how to make a big final battle without actually creating a big final battle, and the answer is to reuse previous levels and fight the same guys a few times.

Could be worse, I thought it was going to be crunch.

Which is probably why I never finished and never will. Half-assed and it shows

I'd forgotten Starfield existed

I make very short games for no money, and even I know you do the last part early and the first part late.

At least I know who to blame for such shit writing.

First there's a big space battle while orbiting the planet

Citation needed. You fight 3 or 4 starborn ships. Crank the difficulty down to easy, otherwise you're getting rekt.

we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together

The story is missing A LOT more than just a final location in order to tie it together. And don't even get me started on that bullshit unity clone telling you "you've answered your own question" about who created the macguffin and why.

Part of the issue, Shen said, was the sheer size of the team working on Starfield.

While I can understand the problem of silo'ed teams wanting to do their own stuff and turning their noses when it comes to collaboration, I have to ask, was there anything like design documents or something that made clear outlines of what was expected to be made? This is an important question because Emil Pagliarulo, who was the lead designer and de facto director of the game, hates design documents.

I also appreciate that you can talk your way out of fighting the final Starborn—not only is that a traditional Bethesda solution

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA - oh, writer, you're so funny! Let me talk my way out with Alduin, talk some sense into Mehrunes Dagon, convince Dagoth Ur to give up, talk the 4 factions into a peace agreement in FO4... Also, that was one of the most half assed "talk to win" scenes in the game, but I do agree that it's much better to score a success there than have to fucking fight the hunter and emissary, it's a fucking slog.