it was indeed some kind of a choice to have a 6 to 8 hour (literally) climb of a tower, which is 85 platforms, of which at the summit, you fight the secret boss
of which, if you chose the right difficulty that was challenging for you, you'd be able to make a speed based/no weapon/lightest and fastest build that you scrounged together because you did some math, that got you up to that secret boss in a bit of a shorter in game time than 6 to 8 hours, actually save the game at the summit, take a break, fast travel back, get your best fighting build you've put together meticulously, and then fight him and then actually fucking beat him first try. There are no puzzles, there are no enemies to fight, there's nothing but you and the clouds that cover that deep dark blue...and maybe your own internal thoughts about how wonderful or awful your day was (and other things maybe). Eighty-Five Small platforms as floors. No recharging or refueling. No checkpoints other than reaching the fast travel at the summit. You cannot save the game before reaching the summit and decide you want to come back to it later, doing so in increments. You have to sit there and have a cleared schedule like you would any game that has a raid in a different game of the same time span.
There might be a whole analysis that someone did of this out there, however, from my perspective, it was honestly both the easiest way to get to a secret boss in a game, and the most poorly designed interactively to get to a secret boss in a game.
I'd also say jokingly someone on the dev team wanted to make a Do You Love The Colour Of The Sky more interactive somehow, and yet 5000x more painful than getting carpal tunnel cos you've scrolled on tumblr longer than any other time you did before you learned what doomscrolling was.
Or
Someone on the team asked "what's the worst way we can do a 'Do It Once And Never Do It Again' design of a level that maybe we can flex our Dick Move skills?"
Either way...it really could've been, on all accounts, a way better player experience of Dick Move to get to The Secret Boss
2/10 interaction