Was this all because of the animations backlash?

If MEA was released as patch 10 version - so with the animations pretty much completely addressed but the same basic issues (which you may or may not have) existing with writing, characters and story - would we still be in the same position today?

While I found the animation memes funny, I do consider them extremely low on my prorities, and was much more disappointed by other things that did not make MEA into a laughing stock the same way the hilaribad gifs did. It seems to me like that particular strain of backlash, which was very unforgiving and meme-focused, really posioned the well.

On the other hand, MEA clearly had an extremely chaotic development cycle, and we know now the Montreal Motive merger was planned, almost certainly long in advance. It's certainly possible that, short of critcial acclaim and a huge financial windfall, dlc was unlikely and they knew that from the begining.

We will never know the full extent of which factors determined what, but I'm interested to hear how much blame people lay at the feet of that initial, quite superficial backlash - because we know the game was at least moderately financially successful, and the reviews certainly weren't DIRE - they averaged in the 70s, not the 50s