From the first episode, the original story arc seemed like it was going to focus solely on the murderer (who was a serial killer and probably Crane or the Boy Who Cried Wolf or something), have chapter 2 and possibly 3 deal with mundy cops discovering the severed head and having to cover that up, then chapter 4 and 5 wrapping up the murder investigation with Bigby probably choosing the murderer's fate. Maybe you would face Crane having some protection from the Crooked man or something (even in Episode 1, Dee and Dum were obviously working for somebody), but I really question whether the original plotline was suddenly going to turn into the Crooked Man Show by episode 4 and 5, and ep 4 and 5 make Crane completely irrelevant.

I cannot imagine that their original intention was to completely get distracted from the murder investigation, and turning it into a he-said-she-said at the end of "Do you believe the Crooked Man did or did not directly order the murder of the two women?" I'm sure some elements in the final game were planned from the start and they tried to keep what they could (the severed head was obviously never going to be Snow because she has to be alive in later comics, stuff like the troll funeral for Lily and so on still could've happened if that's who the real identity of the Snow head was before and after the rewrite, possibly the twist where Faith/Nerissa is disguised at the beginning/end, etc.), but so much of episodes 2-5 seem like something they had to patch together after they were forced to do a giant rewrite.

I would've vastly preferred a storyline about being Bigby tracking down a Fabletown serial killer, compared to "I guess two unruly prostitutes got killed off, and there's really no big mystery to solve because apparently everybody knew about the Crooked Man running half the town except for idiot Bigby and Snow, so whatever, I guess deal with the Crooked Man except you depose him no matter what choices you make so it barely feels like any choices matter."