"it can't be that we are all dumb."

its not, its that we are all lazy. think about it for a sec. even from the art aspect, when is the last time someone you saw someone create a normal map from a high poly soldier that looked as nice as your last screen? the only time with 3dgs i saw taht was the one sebecrea maded for lived. so if the art end is lazy right now then i only have to assume that the programming side is too.

edit: I have to say i just noticed and i really love how their parallax mapped leaves turned out (not sure it might just be really good normal mapping)