Zig might get away with it by restricting itself to a narrow niche where this kind of simplicity is advantageous. Go tries to eat a much larger piece of the pie, and the deficiency is felt more as a result.
And with respect to discussion of boilerplate, you can, of course, always have a "Zig++" language that patches over Zig. By cutting out its own metaprogramming functionality, it's much more straightforward to generate useful Zig source. There are a lot of advantages to restraint in the design, and Go does share that, too.