What modern game dev misses is that it's the space to imagine things within a more abstract visual framework that creates that sense of wonder and possibility. Game aesthetics have to have "space" for their players' imaginations to fill in order to have the same impact as those from earlier eras.
Yesterday, my daughter made a pool out of sea lanterns because they look kind of like pool tiles. Would she have thought to do that if the art for sea lanterns was more precise? Probably not.
I think its graphic style will continue to hold up far better than some of the other titles well into the future. The fact that we can look back at the Spaceworld demo and laugh at how dated it looks is proof enough.
My iPad is an awesome games platform but we're not going to see a game like LoZ:BotW on it for many years to come (but check out Oceanhorn). It offers great gaming, but in smaller bite sized morsels. My last console was a Wii and I can easily see myself getting a Switch mainly just for Zelda, MarioKart and hopefully a new Endless Ocean.
Here are a few multi-platform games I've been playing on iOS lately that have worked very well:
* Severed
* The World Ends With You: Solo Remix
* Final Fantasy 9
* Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies
There's a bunch of Breath of the Wild fanart out there that purposefully imitates Hayao Miyazaki's style: https://imgur.com/a/t4x4U . Forget realism, something like a playable Princess Mononoke is what I've been craving ever since the dawn of 3D gaming.
Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies is entirely in 3D but it manages to look a lot like the 2D art style of the previous games.
I found it far better than the Twilight Princess' rendering.
I've always liked that visual style.
Borderlands is an aesthetic I like, as well.
If you do not like those games, then no. I got it as a gift, but I would have gladly paid 20-30USD for it. Even though I'm not a massive transformers fan.
And how has no 3D artist on the planet got around to modeling an authentic transforming 1986 Unicron yet?
I would have expected the painterly style to prevent my suspension of disbelief but it hasn't.
I agree it doesn't have to be a top priority to push the limits beyond where we're at today. But it's disappointing to see Zelda miss out on at least current-gen graphics. The Witcher 3 is 2 years old now, at least come close to matching that. And it's hard to justify paying a current-gen price for a console with previous-gen capabilities.
Art has fallen into the same sort of trap as architecture, where you get otherwise-intelligent, otherwise-tasteful students of the field -- like the author of McMansion Hell -- swooning over abominations like Boston's Government Center. Trust your heart, not academia. Refine your heart, to be sure (art is that which doesn't fall apart when you start asking questions about it); but trust it.
But in terms of advancing games as an art form, I think aesthetics that are more "grammatical" and "open" is the way forward (think comics/animation, Studio Ghibli). This doesn't eschew the use of Realism, but changes it from being the pinnacle we're striving for to a tool (among others) to be used in creating better art.
I think that's why those type of paintings are considered old-fashioned and silly when we have plenty of photographs, movies, and books that tell us what these regions are actually like. Not to mention that travel is now far more accessible to non-wealthy people.
I think that it's a fascinating insight into Europe at the time and how they viewed the world. It was also a lot more romantic period than now. Nationalistic paintings showing a nation's ancestors (like the Germanic tribes of the Roman era) were popular and tended to look the same way: a fantasy land ideal of what they wanted it to look like rather than what it really looked like.
On the other hand, BotW has framerate drops and limitations on the Switch and it was designed for a console that was underpowered five years ago, which doesn't bode well.
But the cartoony style let them keep going with just minor updates to the graphics for more than a decade. That decision must've made them at least a billion dollars over the last 10 or so years.
[EDIT: Yes I know the post above has been edited to fix/clarify, no I can't delete this post.]
Would I want Zelda, or Minecraft to be that way? Certainly not... Their aesthetic fits their world.