you hit the nail perfectly on the head. yeah a LOT was cut for time. I meant to spend about 3 hours on the main character- getting them moddled, rigged, and so on - but it was my first time making such an elaborate character and I ran into issues getting him to animate. As a result it ended up taking 12 hours. the vast majority of the time I had.
As for the lore I was hoping to make a story where your playing as a survey ship which made a jump to a previously unexplored section of space. but someone screwed up the calculations and your ship ran right into an asteroid field that tore it to pieces and killed the rest of the crew.
The goal would have been to search the wreckage for what was left of the bridge so you could send a message back to base making them AWARE of the danger, and not to send a recuse crew because they will only be going to their deaths.
but because I ran out of time to make the audio, the second half of the ship, and the (most likely terrible) cutscene setting up the intro. That was not going to work. So i just ended up seeing how much I could make in the 3 hours I had left, and making a basic story around that.