Great to hear some news. This was one game I was seriously hoping was NOT dead.
It feels like this will need to be something rather epic in scale, to meet thy vision's scope... so I for one, playing on a decent gaming rig, do not care so much about the size elements. It might sound very inconsiderate of mobile device players, but for me, I think this game taking the time it needs, being as long as it needs, and being as beautiful as it can be whilst being so, is the best justice which can be done to a project to pregnant with potential, and off to such an amazing quality start.
Burn out though, when facing something like this, is a real thing . I reckon the smaller more frequent update approach is definitely a decent way to handle things moving forwards. A few years... I say a few.. how about five... ago I began writing a book. I say book, but this... is more of an... epic rant of massive scale, like.. a book that would be sold by starting letters in batches if it was an encyclopedia or dictionary... I went HARD. Almost 400,000 words, and 800 pages non stop. But then, the wall. BANG... burnt the F out hard. In the first two years I wrote 80% of what I have so far (and it is still only about a third done)... the next two, I wrote only about 15%... and this last year-ish.. I have put out about 5% of the work.
Looking back, now, as someone with some experience, if I was to mention anything to the me just starting, it would be less is more. If I had aimed to work maybe a few hours a week, since I actually technically cannot work on the project full time...and tried to perhaps do little pieces, chapters in smaller batches, at the time.... I'd not be JUST coming out basically over a year of writers block and fatigue. It is BY FAR the best way to go methinks.
From a gamer's perspective, me the hard core, day 0, first gen gamer of over 45 years gaming experience, that is not ideal... because selfishly, since I think this game so amazing, I want huge amounts of content, I want it to be as epic in size scope and scale as it feels like it need be to match the vision you seem to have laid the ground work for... but that said, even then, I suspect the game will even be fully completed faster the smaller more consistent updates released too.
Thanks for the update on this amazing game, I cannot wait for the next part to finally arrive, though for now I am just so glad this project is not dead.