The music was particularly amazing in this game. I just think the biggest drawback were the very cryptic puzzles especially in the later half. It all makes sense retrospectively once you understand what you are doing but in the moment it can be very frustrating.
It reminds me lot of Myst like puzzles - you end up interacting with a bunch of weird technology and it isn't always clear on what you are doing.
They literally did have to rush the ending. It's why the German guy looks like an old man in one of the last cinematics. There was supposed to be more with him going into the weird dimension and something about that caused him to age a lot.
I don't recall exactly what but I believe there was an final act that got cut.
If I recall correctly it was a rogue developer that decided to make a fully nude model and put Elliot's head on it. So it isn't a model of his body at the time, but still obviously a pretty big breach of trust.
Also this article was written in 2015 well before Elliot's transition so that why it uses the older pronouns. I'm definitely a big believer in using a person's proferred pronouns but I don't it is "unfortunate" that older things have their old pronouns in them.
Sorry, I took a look and unfortunately I couldn't find anything so it is possible I'm misremembering things. In fact, the stuff about Brink becoming an old man might have been something to do with eliminating his addiction to the life crystals - I think that is a detail that was in the novelization?
It did have a chaotic development that had to be restarted a few times. There's info about that in the IMDB page for the game. There's a neat tidbit in that there was originally supposed to be a fourth astronaut who had cofunded the mission but they were ultimately cut from the game (though supposedly early artwork still featured 4 sets of footprints)