Pretty much this. D&D, historically, likes to hide the nuts and bolts that make it really seem to be a game. Everything is viewed through a lens of verisimilitude. 4e came along and just brought everything out into the open. Gone was any "natural language", powers did exactly what they said they did, without much wiggle room for interpretation. Sure there was flavor text, but it didn't really mean anything- it was the wording of the powers themselves that mattered.
Very little thought was given to how powers work, see all the debates about "Come and Get It" where the Fighter just draws foes to them automagically, because that's what the designers thought Fighters of that level should be able to do, and didn't bother to explain the whys or the hows, or to include ways for victims to resist being taunted by what everyone presumed was a "non-magical" class when it really wasn't (the Martial power source being just that, a source of power one taps into- and that's not getting into some of the explicitly preternatural abilities one gets from Paragon and Epic tier sub-classes).
4e rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because it was mechanics first, verisimilitude second. Gone were the little bits of useless flavor like spell components, mystic words, or grounding anything into the setting- you can look at what happened to the Forgotten Realms and other older worlds when it they were forced to conform to mechanics not built for them.
I really enjoyed 4e, but it came out swinging, saying "I am the future of the hobby, you must submit", about as subtle as a punch in the nose. When I first saw it, I was completely turned off by things like reach weapons being made almost useless and strange 1/combat or 1/day maneuvers that did "2[W] damage and slowed the target until the end of their next turn." It wasn't until I actually played the game more that I realized how good it was, despite it's initial presentation.