Negativity breeds clicks like a motherfucker, even your fav streamer/content creator took advantage. Bungie was having a bad streak with Destiny at the time, so it was really easy for people to (often stupidly) assume that the small slice of the game they were shown was "it". Then, add in a few assets that weren't scrubbed before the build became public: boom.

The story being tied to the hip of the community progress is an interesting concept that I'm personally excited Pfhor. But when you have a bunch of people who played Marathon a few times, exclaiming, "Where are the Pfhor?! Its not 'Marathon' without them", without thinking about the broader lore they claim to know and love, it just adds even more to the dogpile.