Well, I suppose part of the reason that I completely disagree with you is partly because of the age difference.
Your first video game was Ocarina of Time, where as my first video game was the first Legend of Zelda.
I started by playing video games solely on the NES.
I'm not discriminating you because of your age, but I'm saying that because older people starting playing games which consisted of giant pixels and no detail, graphics aren't the most important thing to them.
That's how I feel, at least.
Back then all I had were giant pixels and a great imagination (I'm starting to sound like my great-grandmother! oh god!).
That being said, the way I see it is:
Gameplay
Story
Graphics
But, even then, I don't see the reason so deem Wind Waker unplayable at all!
I can understand that the Zelda series has always been rather inconsistent with their art direction, but really, Wind Waker would not have the same impact at all if it had, say, Twilight Princess graphics.
I loved Wind Waker because the story was amazing; I might have groaned a bit at the more childish graphic approach, but after a while I grew to love it! It's more creative and unique; simplistic does not always mean bad. In fact, the art style choice breathed more life into the game and made it more acceptable for the numberous comical and humorous scenes in the game.
In my opinion; Twilight Princess was a step backwards on what Zelda is really about.
I know that Twilight Princess highlighted the series and was meant to bring in the more "mature," and "hardcore" crowd by having "grimdark" graphics, but the Zelda series has never been this way.
A lot of people seem to ignore the humble "cartoony" games that came before it, and put Twilight Princess on a pedestal!
One of the things I disliked about Twilight Princess was the lack of COLOR.
Apparently, when you enter "realistic" graphics, that means that everything turns BROWN.
The "mature" graphics of TP consisted of BROWN and BLOOM.
Now, I'm not against mature Zelda games at all, don't get me wrong! I wouldn't mind a mature Zelda game at all; but I think the maturity should come from the
story rather than the graphics. A good example of this is Majora's Mask. The graphics were bright and colorful, some enemies were jiggling jelly balls with goofy eyes and hillbilly teeth! The skeletons in the game were almost cute and weren't scary at all! Yet, despite all this, the game is about the end of the world, and has dark undertones. The maturity of this game doesn't come from the bright, cartoony graphics, but from the story and situation of it all.
Back on track; The graphics seen in Twilight Princess just screamed "GENERIC" (again, this is all just my opinion).
I can't help but think that if the Zelda series continues the this fashion, we won't be able to tell it apart from the graphics of Halo or Gears!
I'd prefer to have something unique and charming.
Now, I'm not out to just crudely bash TP; I did enjoy the game, and I liked the character designs, but it just didn't hold up to the previous titles for reasons that don't only involve graphics (but, that's a different story altogether).
Back on topic; I don't think you should base things off graphics so much. You're going to miss out on some really great games that way.
Video games are about having fun and entertaining yourself by living a life you could never experience otherwise.
I see realistic things all the time. Everywhere I look is realism.
Personally, I love the artistic choice shown in Skyward Sword.
It brings COLOR back to the games, which was lacking in TP.
It's not as cartoony as Toon Link, but not as generic/drab/"grimdark" as TP.
It's a nice mixture of the two, with new elements that are different from the rest!
The impressionistic undertones are a nice compliment to the bright skies and giant clouds (which, I imagine we will be seeing a lot of).
But, we can't truly gauge the quality of the game until it actually come out and we're able to judge it as a whole (as I said before, gameplay and story are more important to me than graphics).
I'm sorry if anyone disagrees with me (I know a lot of people love TP), but I'd just like to stress that this is my opinion, and I won't force my opinion onto you.
I respect you all for your own opinion and your right to have them, so please do the same for me.
(I edited this post about 8 times. Sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out that long
)