They haven't shown the journey mode research yet. I wonder how it is going to work.
Depends on what you bind things to. The new gamepad approach opens up a LOT more options for bindings and its pretty clever how things are done to avoid conflicts or duplications (such as the old "fire a grapple when you use something" on some current gamepad defaults). For Research (on Advanced Default - which is what I use and recommend), its basically move over to an item, R3 to bring up the research box (the little progress bar thing) and X to confirm research. Once you learn the muscle memory, it is super fast.
Also ngl, I think the new ui for console looks even stranger than the pipeworks one. The very first one imo was great and tailored for consoles well
The old Engine UI is not coming back, sorry. We have consistently said this for years. It is a vast departure from the look and feel of the game that we desire and was limited in so many ways. The overarching idea here is to have a common look and feel - while allowing for tailored differences by platform - so that things feel familiar for folks that change platforms while also not constrained/derivative of another platform.
What we really would like here is for people to dive into some constructive details for us. "Stranger" in what ways? Things are still very much in development and iteration here so this is the time to have those ideas shared and voices heard!
All that said, you are going to see a lot more options and customizations and control binding choices than you have ever had before - by a large margin. You can somewhat see a bit of this in the video that DR made when they are in settings.... I mean (WIP caveat as always) - just look at these two non-control based tabs. Then you have dedicated tabs for gamepad, kb+m, and yes... even touch because you know things like Xbox Remote play are a thing (Switch touch will operate a bit differently, but I imagine it will have a touch tab all its own).
You will be able to turn things off/on, up/down, etc. like not seen before - and hopefully that customization will make for an even better experience for everyone. The truth in the end is that no one default setup/UI/settings is going to make everyone happy. Saw it on PC, saw it on mobile, seen it in the past on Console. So, the team will make the very best default via those team discussions and onboarding feedback - but also try to give the player as much power as feasible to change things (there will have to be limits, as there always are - I doubt you are going to see something crazy like a fully malleable UI, for example).