Dark and Gritty VS Cartoony. Diablo 3's aesthetic. Thoughts?

[cgmetallica1981]

I remember when I was little the exterior (interior as well) of the Cathedral scared the shit out of me. It looked evil as hell, and still does. Those red lights, man. Now look at the Cathedral in Diablo III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXkgyC9j8PE (~4:35). No atmosphere, the building design is something closer to Warcraft than of Diablo, you can see everything on your screen and nothing is in shadows, rainbows, and just look at those menus, not Diablo at all. Speaking of menus, does anybody else hate that in Diablo III the inventory space is much larger and items take up a lot less space? I know it makes inventory management less tedious (pretty much get's rid of it actually), but I liked it better in the original games where it had less space while items took up more space so you couldn't run around picking up everything and ending up with a load of weapons to sell. Got a little carried away, forgot that this was a discussion about aesthetics.

 

[Phaerim]

This is what associate cartoonish with:

This is what I associate with "Stylized graphics":

This is what I associate with "Realistic graphics":

Here is a screenshot from the latest beta patch. Compare it to the ones above, and decide for yourselves.

Diablo 3 is obviously in a mix of the 2nd and 3rd category, making a distinct imitation of the realistic anatomy and physics, but also freely interprets on the style and expression. I can't in no way see your association with "cartoonish" graphics.

 

[Hyper-space]

The cartoon look is shit. Diablo has never been light hearted, or comical. The fact that the gold grabbing pigs etc have been dropped due to this reinforces the notion that they are just using WoW designers for a game that should be entirely different in aesthetics to WoW.
Arguing specs is nonsense - Diablo 2 has low specs and doesn't have a cartoony look to it.

The visuals of Diablo have never had any specific style, they looked pretty much like every other isometric RPG at the time.

Maybe I am not well-versed enough when it comes to Diablo's design, but the move to "cartoony" visuals seems more like them trying to give the visuals an actual identity.