CD Projekt Red are pretty famous for horrendous crunch work culture
Yeah, this is grim. We're all expected to put up with it because everybody's doing it - Naughty Dog and Rockstar, like you and mobias say, for example - and it's okay, because they make 'good' games, which these days means 50+ hour, multi-million budget, sprawling open world experiences steeped in moral choice, that need stretches of development time the imagined average consumer (who also doesn't care about crunch) won't stomach.
The critics, who really should be speaking out on this, can't do so effectively, because then they don't get to do the sort of key pre-release coverage we're getting now. And even with the crunch, it's taken, what, 7 years at minimum, since the announcement? From an outside perspective, crunch hasn't given them many benefits.
The game looks brilliant, but I'd have been happy to wait years more for it from a zero-crunch culture CDPR.
My dilemma will be whether or not to get it for PC or console. I'll probably get it for console.
I think this is a safe bet, it'll have been designed from the ground up for a current-gen console, and you can still play it on the next-gens on launch day and get a free upgrade when the enhanced versions come out.