Can’t talk about him, however I think that he means that Grim Dawn came years after PoE, so why he’s saying that.
I believe that part of the issue with PoE2 is that is something like a big expansion of PoE. And PoE has several design flaws, part because of the 10 years of content, as nearly everyone mentions, but also because PoE started as an indie game, with obvious indie issues.
For example: the story of PoE1 is horrid, don’t know anyone who cares about its lore, I still remember that you felt pretty much purposeless beyond “keep going where you’re told to and kill all monsters” back when the game ended at Merveil during closed beta. And what they’ve done since that is adding another stories on top of the previous ones with the 2nd and 3rd act that have little continuity, and gone a bit better from the 3rd and ahead, but the base lore is messed.
I honestly doubt that the full new campaign will delete all the previous lore, despite I think that the game desperately needs it. And perhaps it shouldn’t as it could mean alienating the (few?) people who loved it and supported it from the begining.
You previously mentioned the “spreadsheet simulator”, right? Stuff being that overcomplicated is the main component of that feeling, but I think that a good fantasy that feels really immersive helps in abstracting from all those systems and numbers.
Visuals-wise: PoE player characters were frequently referred in the past as “walking turds”. The new characters seem like a very improved version, however still not as stylished as the ones people like Blizzard does. The monsters, at least the ones I’ve seen in the preview videos, keep looking that “walking-turd-clunky” to me, both aesthetically and regarding its movement. The environment graphics look gorgeous, however anything that’s placed over them, say a caravan, a monster, the skill effects, or whatever, even the UI, still looks “indie”. And I honestly doubt that they will completely revamp all the monsters and UI, nor that they’d be able to have a 100% AAA-looking game.
Same way we talk about the old lore, you can apply it to every single thing that it needs to be removed. Getting rid of things it’s hard, ask Windows devs whenever they want to remove a feature. Blight, Heist, Delve, Betrayal, Incursion, Synthesis, Metamorph, Breach, … They’re too many and there’s no room for all them in PoE2. If asked which ones to remove, every single player would name a set of leagues that would be different from the set of other player, so it’ll cause a lot of backlash, so I expect that GGG won’t be able to make the “lifting” as deep as it needs, and pretty much everything will carry over to the new game, transferring the issue too.