Graphic's cant save the kind of gameplay Lionheart has, you can zone out graphics quality pretty fast unless it is truely horrible or it affects gameplay (Lionheart's resolution issue for instance, and the avatars might look good but the animation was horrible). The low polygonal look of NWN avatars didnt bother me that much (that the gameplay was shallow did, but I still finished the game). The quality of avatars for RR/TOEE seems as good or better, and that is good enough for me.
Maybe it would have looked better if RR could have used some type of IBR with on the fly creation of sprites, but it would have been far from trivial (work which they could probably scrap after RR too, full 3D games like KOTOR are the future wether we like it or not). They needed a game out fast, they already had a pipeline setup for skeletal animated 3D characters ... and translating that to a 3D engine was easy. End of story, live with it or move on.
The only reason we are still getting 2D isometric games is because they are relatively cheap to make, it is one big compromise.
