Yikes, yeah, that's rough. But it's also another good question: how much brilliance comes out of adversity? When someone is sitting fat and comfortable, a lot of times it doesn't seem like the most brilliant things come then. The article assumes that if they had less insane working conditions that the game would have been even better. That may or may not be true, we'll never know. For sure it would have been a more pleasant dev process, and I hate they had to go through that either way.
But in terms of the game itself... I think it's a big assumption to think that it would be materially better had it not been under such crunch, etc. It's possible that all those challenges made them view things in a certain way that let them get to the meat of what a good game was. It's a big leap on my end to say that as well. Mainly my point is that we can't really know, but that I think that both situations happen in the world. Sometimes adversity is something that causes a group to rise to the occasion. Other times it crushes a group. Assuming that adversity will do one thing or the other is a bit broad of a generalization, I guess.
