Frostpunk was an amazing game, but I honestly don’t know that I ever want to play the sequel. The first one was so stressful. It was the game equivalent of Requiem for a Dream, ie the best game I never want to play again.
First and foremost, if Itsuno-san doesn’t have time to be the director of the game, it can’t really get made. So having an opportunity to have him spend the time he needed on the game and being able to bring together the other resources needed, such as a large team to work on a game with this scope, just took some years for that all to really fit together. And then once it did, we got started.