This is the kind of comment that is only possible in the gaming world, where people cheer for (sometimes it borders on worship of) giant, mega-corporations the same way most people cheer for their children's sports teams.  No criticism is allowed, lest you hurt the mega corp's feelings.  

There's not been many Switch games that haven't felt dated for years. It is what it is. TOTK is probably one of the least offensive in that regard.

Not directly, but you said ''The graphics in general feel like a quality indie game from 10-15 years ago.'', so when comparing it to perhaps the highest quality open world AAA game from 12 years ago, it shouldn't stand a chance really.

I'm glad Nintendo put its focus elsewhere over the years as in my opinion, as much as they might be behind with graphical fidelity, they are ahead in gameplay.

The game looks beautiful, has a fantastic artstyle and most importantly it plays like a dream.

I dont really agree with the game making the Switch feel old. I played Dead Island 2 on the PS4 and it took like 2 minutes to load between zones. And those zones are just a tiny fraction of the size of TotK. Yet in TotK it takes seconds to load in this giant world. Its very impressive. The game looks just as good as BotW imo. In fact I would say BotW made the Switch look more outdated than this game.

The art style is good, but sure, visuals do look dated. Personally Ive opted to play it only with the Switch in portable mode, its too noticeable playing it docked.

Damn them reutilizing similar graphical techniques to enhance the gameplay and creative emerging gameplay side of things *Shake fist violently*

But no really, I think the hyperbolic statements of OP are simply symptomatic of the mindset part of the AAA industry to always pursue the race to graphics. The constant need of renewal with such technical prowess has handicapped in some cases advancements in others sphere of video game development.

Some devs like Nintendo, From Software or Indies are the type who've gone mostly against the current of such train of thoughts to focus on other aspects.

Meantime, 'less I forget, chosen and varied artstyle can lead games to be much less dated once revisited. The one used by BOTW and TOTK were a treat back in 2017 and still is to this day

Honestly, all I can say is that I don't agree, a 15 indie years old game? which one really? which PS2 game looks like this one? so BOTW was a Ps1 game in your opinion?

I haven't seen the game in person yet. So it's just been on Youtube with compression and bitrate to consider, but there were a few times out in the field where I thought "man, this place looks really... yellow".

It reminds me a bit of when Nintendo teased what could have been possible (at least conceptually) in these:

And then it went in this direction:

(Shoutout to Youtube compression.)

Although I usually like the artstyle of BOTW/TOTK, especially the character design. But there are times when I look at it and am reminded that the chipset inside the Switch was already several years old before the Switch launched. On top of being for mobile/handhelds.

I think there was a recent thread asking about the viability of having Switch games be powered up when docked.
I think that would be an interesting solution for Switch 2. On top of DLSS technology.

Actually the direction of Rols comment is worshippers of even bigger mega-corporations than Nintendo envy the success of TOTK and therefore try to diminish it in the only way they can think of: graphics.

The other comments in this thread just simply acknowledge a great game as a great game, there is no Nintendo-worship in that.