Not quite. What I'm seeing is a story evolution akin to old TTRPGs. You start out with small, seemingly innocuously-disconnected quests, right? (Vanilla Destiny). Then you hit the first "Major villain", and things begin to weave together. (Heart of the Black Garden/Atheon). Then, as the story progresses, the GM decides that some of the old NPC's were interesting, and fleshes them out along with a world-spanning questline.