Call me SWSH Sider.
I've assisted at the entire development of these two games at Game Freak's offices, some things are probably missing but that's all I managed to recollect.
Why yes, the games were rushed, how could you tell?
Game was originally planned to be released on 2020 but TPCI complained several times so that's why several Pokémon were cut.
When the deadline was discussed for the last time and the date was set to this year, the game's plot was still midway, around 5th Gym.
7th and 8th Gym were finished at the last moment and the entire Team Yell and Marnie arc was designed in the very final stages of development to fill the endgame.

•Original plot was way more centered around War.
The Hero statue at Motostoke was actually a correct representation of Galar's hero who tamed Zacian and Zamazenta and fought alongside them in ancient times against hordes of Giant Pokémon.
This was depicted on Turrfield's grass but eventually only the Gigantamax Pokémon survived in the final build.
Once the Toxtricity was tamed he joined forces with the hero helping him to end the war.
This was still kept in the final version as a statue along his Low-key forme.

•Speaking of legendaries, only Zamazenta was a wolf originally, Zacian was more of a goatesque Pokémon with sword-horns.

•Evil Team was military soldiers with Sordward or Shielbert as the leader with a very different design.
Main goal was to take down Galar's monarchy with a golpe.
Grunts used load of Galarian Farfetch'd and Falinks and their HQ was Hammerlocke (the building that eventually became the Stadium).

•Leon and Hop were descendants of the Royal Family living in Wyndon, which was very similiar to Buckingham Palace.
Depending on the version, Leon had a legendary Pokémon opposed to your version as in lore, after the war, one Pokémon remained loyal to the Royal Family for eternity while the other one escaped in the forest, where no human could see them.