I am eternally skeptical of the argument of old games being better and modern fans being dumber/inferior in some way. I think that the latter argument is always untrue, though the former argument is usually untrue but can vary game to game. To go point by point, the prettiness or ugliness of any game is in the eye of the beholder. I've played part of BG1 and I think it's a pretty nice-looking game.
This is a pretty intriguing argument anyway. Bioware have always aimed for mainstream audiences, in relative terms. They may not have aimed at the "modern" mainstream. But tried HARD to appeal to the Diablo and Warcraft (RTS!) crowd back then, some of the biggest crowds in PC gaming at the time. They were heavily targeting people who'd never touch something like Darklands, Realms Of Arkania or Fallout before.
In particular BG1 is a super simple game in its low level play -- in AD&D 2e this means pushing a button upon level-up, and having casters with barely ability (the only characters wich much ability in 2e to begin with). If Bioware had the tech and budget to do cinematic cutscenes and full VO, they would have done that as early as at least BG2.
Also, one of the main attractions for Interplay was Bioware's engine. Rendering environments in lush and VERY PRETTY FOR THE TIME detail. Usually, such environments were tile-based. The Infinity Engine could do this stuff painterly -- which was actually its strength, despite even older Ultima games going far deeper than the pretty but static IE environments. Interplay marketing focused heavily on how pretty the game would look and how exciting the action would be.
tldr; Guido Henkel is spot on about BG. "Publishers turned their backs on these kinds of hard core games and instead went down the path of streamlined mainstream products, especially since Baldur’s Gate proved very clearly at the time that there is a market for light role-playing games." https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8620
And yet even compared to the streamlined games of the past, modern games like BG3 are even more streamlined and bland.
