No it didn't. Twilight Princess was always an ugly game. It just looked "good" in the trailers because there was no "next gen" to compare it too. Twilight Princess has aged terribly.

To be fair, most of the hype around Twilight Princess was over motion controls because, well, this was before we realized motion controls for swords is a terrible idea. It looked good for its time, but no more. It certainly hasn't aged like Wind Waker.

I guess it was about halfway through this last generation I changed my mind over graphics. I used to completely love graphics, but now I don't really care. The hardware is powerful enough now that the difference between the ultra-realistic and mediocre graphics is not really that obvious. It's the few games which stand out with a deliberate attempt to have an art style which stand out. The Souls games, Mirror's Edge, Bayonetta, and, for better or worse, Final Fantasy XIII are some of the most visually impressive games this generation has produced.

And it's not because they are technically impressive, either, although Crystal Tools is actually pretty amazing from a technical standpoint. It's because these games have a deliberate aesthetic. All but one of them run against the norm of gun-metal gray games, and even that one, the Souls games, chose to have that kind of style to match the weighty combat and oppressive atmosphere.

To my eye, X has that. The textures have this plasticy sheen (and I mean that in a good way.) It looks like it will have a cohesive art style, and if it has a story and RP mechanics to match that style, I'm sold. This is Gen 8. I don't care if it's a gigaFLOP short of PS4 because my eye can't really tell the difference.

Nintendo has never done that. They don´t even supersample their press shots and their WiiU games look better than their initial reveal (Pikmin 3, Donkey Kong TF shows improvements in the latest trailers etc.)

Heck, even the original Xenoblade looked better when it was finally released compared to the announcement trailer.

I don´t think we have te be afraid that the final product won´t look as good as the first 2 trailers.

Maybe the Wii U wasn't actually powerful enough? It is unfortunately looking like this game got quietly canceled like those Retro Studios titles from years ago. If it were in development, Nintendo would obviously be bubbling with chatter about such a fantastic looking game. But Nintendo hasn't even mentioned it since Spring of last year. I think they are hoping everyone forgets it.

I love Twilight Princess, I've played it this Christmas and it still looks very good. Don't know why everyone keeps saying it has aged terribly. To me it still looks so much better than Wind Waker, which has aged much worse than TP. I can't imagine playing the original WW now - there is a reason why they remade it instead of TP.

OT: I hope X looks better than what was shown, cause the trailer really isn't all that impressive. It may be at first, but the more I see it, the more "meh" it is.

@Jumpin X was just mentioned by Monolith Soft like a week ago I think

The difference is that Nintendo don't do this. They always have their final product looking as good as if not better than their preview trailers. They also don't do bullshots.

They're the only publisher I can think of that are honest in that way.

http://mynintendonews.com/2012/11/02/nintendo-confirms-new-super-mario-bros-u-will-not-run-at-1080p/

Was probably just a mistake on their part though.

But there are also games which looked better at release as 1-2 years before which means the possibility to look worse is probably not higher as the possibility to look even better. Best choice is probably to simply wait.