I personally think this was one of the most important changes Rust made; without it, Rust would have been interesting but would not have been able to compete directly with C and C++ for systems programming.
Thanks for articulating what I’ve failed to do for a decade.
Would we have gotten to "optional"? Maybe! But it's hard to predict the counterfactual, especially when substantial success usually has components of both design and luck/right-place-right-time. Rust hit a sweet spot, and it's not clear how a different history of Rust would have turned out.