Very long back story. Rant. Feel free to skip

I work in Unity which is a fantastic engine that can go astounding things... and then I see people freaking out about being able to build games that look like mine craft... Ughgh. Just cause the game is fun doesn't mean you have to WANT to make your games look bad just cause THAT game looks bad...

Then I see all the assets being released where the authors are so excited to say their models are only 300 polygons or less and they bucket filled it in Photoshop themselves. This now falls under the heading of "mobile ready"... cause you know, mobile devices have no power at all and anything better than Flappy Bird is a miracle on any modern phone...

Oh and then there is the eternal "Make 'retro' games with my sprite sheet assets" or even tools to turn your proper 3D meshes into voxels and or pixelated art the likes of which would have amazed you to see on an 8bit console.

I have wanted to create something truly spectacular and yet for all the years that I did contract work instead, I just watched the asset store pile up with retro, low poly, mobile ready, Minecraf-esque stuff and it just infuriated me that people who can't or won't even try to do something in 3D when using this powerful 3D engine are now making "retro gaming" and "as bad looking as possible so it can compete with Minecraft" a thing. And that thing is sticking and more and more of those assets are being released daily...

So much so that Unity even built in an entire 2D system into their 3D engine due to demand. Progress backwards is what I see :( Let's all only make Minecraft and Castlevania clones for the next 50 or 80 years... Why not? What ELSE could anyone possibly want to see? Retro is the future of gaming, after all !

I got so fed up looking at content created for the last millennia that I almost never go to the store any more. Being part of the same group of people who do THAT while I am trying to think of something truly innovative and exciting, it just made me totally biased against anything ... well... for lack of a better term "old".

Finally, the point :P

Thanks to my personal hangups I can't bring myself to look at any of the original Legend of Zelda games for instance. Any 2D RPG in the same vein, even with (wait for it...) colour (!). Gasp! :P I know I am wrong in this instance and don't need anyone to point it out for me. I know this...but... I can no longer help it :(

My all time favourite game is a PS1 title that looks absolutely horrible (a cube with what looks like an 8x8 image for a texture to create the hand). I loved BattleToads and when I bought it as part of the Rare Replay product I had to turn off the HD remake and play via the CRT emulator in order to play. I loved Castlevania and Tanks (!) and Elevator Action... So I KNOW very well that games can be fun even if they look terrible... but nevertheless, it is deeply ingrained in me that if it's not in 3D and doesn't use PBR materials at LEAST then I can't give it a second look.

This closes me off to a great many games but my subconscious just won't allow me to like it. So I see this post and I read how much this person loves the game and all I can think to myself is: "I am happy you enjoy this game, mate. I truly am. Me? I will never get to experience it because of my hangups over the graphics. Guess I'll be missing out... :("

So then along comes someone and says "Hey, guess what? I hear this game is getting the letters 3D added to the name" and suddenly I am sitting up straight and paying attention! :D One guy is saying this game is fun without needing graphics and the other is saying "It's getting graphics now!".

Nice! Guess I'll be looking into this after all :)
Thanks for the heads up :)