New Word template for R Markdown in RStudio 2024.09.0?

I just installed the new version of RStudio and was surprised that the default output for word documents changed in R Markdown. The design looks more modern in general, but I cannot get around the decision of left-aligning the subtitle while the title and date is centered.

I couldn't find anything documented in the release notes. Is it because of a new version of Pandoc, or what's happening?

And is there a way to change these defaults when knitting to a Word document (other than using a template everytime)? It might seem like something small, but it means that I need to manually center the subtitle, reduce the huge font size of the title and change the title's color to something that better fits the overall theme after every knit. Or is there maybe a way to adapt these small things in the YAML header?