Maybe it's just me, but when people say 8bit/16 bit games, I automatically include the ms-dos and Amiga look into the mix. Also, the TC never said anything about JRPGs, you did.

Moreover I can garantee you that when you're an indie you only have two choices:

either go full retro or go full AAA

anything in between and get ready for a flood of "what is this? An N64 game?" messages

It's funny because I've worked on many different games with different teams over the last few years (mostly externally as an audio guy) and not one of them had a "full retro" or AAA look and still barely anyone complained about the visuals, in fact users and a few reviewers commented very positively on the visuals most of the time.

It's funny because I've worked as a social media guy and I got exactly the opposite

Shouldn't you then be aware of the popularity of those modern simple and clean visual styles?
Even if you were I'd tell you to shut up twice as hard. :P

I don't know F4llout's work and I won't judge the games he's worked on or the experiences he's had or anything. But I can tell you from personal experience that if indies drop the 2D/2.5D visuals they don't have much to go on other than AAA 3D graphics. (unless of coure you have a nice art style, but even then it's not garanteed)

In one of the studios I've worked on, we would receive praise from previews and comments.

... And then the official trailers were featured on Gamespot and IGN and the slew of comments there actually resulted in a depression for one of the developers.

Again, I'm not saying "I'm better" than F4LLOUT or anything, but my experiences were definately very different
Shouldn't you also try to actually describe something properly instead of listing buzzwords? Because you do know your description doesn't actually mean much, right?

EDIT: Also nice assumptions you're making there

What?
Seriously. What?

1- The description you provided was generic, you simply used buzzwords, you didn't describe any real visual style

2- You assumed I didn't know what is or isn't popular

Get it now?

Well, not really. But instead of posting "what?" again I'll try to elaborate. And please, don't get me wrong, I don't want this to get ugly and unfriendly (I just "sound" like that on the interwebs most of the time :p) and I don't mean to question your knowledge or experience on that matter, but judging from your reaction to my posts you can also imagine how I felt hearing that there's only two ways to go for indies - it felt as if you were accusing all people I've worked with so far of sucking at their jobs since none of them have gone for a definite retro style or tried imitating AAA visuals so far.

Well, I mentioned a "modern simple and clean style" which is hardly a buzzword and I mentioned it in the context of social media. I assumed that you know what I'm talking about. Most people I've worked and discussed this with just describe the style I have in mind that way, I don't know if there's a single term that describes it, I know that comic "guru" Christopher Hart called a similar style which can be found in modern comics as "streamlined" (also I should mention that most of my affiliates are Germans and they may have their own weird way of describing stuff). Anyway, I'm talking about graphics consisting mostly of simple shapes, big surfaces with few details, "aggressive" colors etc.. You know, typical vector graphics, a style probably largely popularized by Flash games which has largely defined the style of casual and social games (which, let's face it, are aimed at maxed out popularity). I haven't done in-depth research on casual games in more than a year but from my experiences with mobile games I can only assume that this style is still alive and well and doesn't receive much criticism. There's also a fair amount of games that use simple pre-rendered graphics which generate a similar overall look (which I personally really dislike) but again, apparently people don't mind it and at least in the mobile sector this style is also very popular and doing well.

I hope that cleans up some of the confusion.

Well, you said that there's only two styles to go with and after my own experiences I can't agree with that at all so I really don't know what I can say here. Most of the time the feedback on the graphics was pretty good and some of the games were pretty successful - and the styles the teams tried covered all sorts of different approaches but not once 8/16 bit retro graphics nor AAA visuals. And judging by the feedback on "retro" games I'm observing lately people are getting less and less fond of those. A year ago people would bash me for expressing my negative opinion on retro visuals, by now I see more and more people instantly write things like "duh, yet another SNES style RPG/platform game".

But let's take a look at a few popular indie games over the last years: there was Braid, Limbo, World of Goo, Incredipede, Machinarium, Botanicula, Primordia, Don't Starve, all the Introversion Software games etc.. Sure, some of them come from well-established studios, some of those had a decent budget but ultimately the styles could be realized by small teams and mostly convinced people through their originality and quality but not the complexity or grandeur. And I'm pretty sure that those games mostly received praise for their visuals. And all of that doesn't include 3D indie games which also received praise for their visuals and certainly did not have a "AAA look". Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams and Tiny & Big come to my mind which hardly went for AAA visuals but rather employed a few simple ideas. Note that Giana Sisters already looked pretty good in the demo which had been prepared before the team got additional funds via Kickstarter so apparently it was possible to go for that style with the resources of a comparably small and new studio.

So really, as far as I can tell indie developers have to get away from the illusion that going for hardcore Japanese retro styles will automatically put them on the safe side. The moment when people praised this approach for its originality has passed ages ago and with that gone I don't see any reason to stick to those.

See while I agree that there is more than just 16bit or AAA graphics, I do feel even the games you mentioned will often be criticized simply because they're in 2D or 2.5D.

I remember this one time, the creator of Volgarr: The Barbarian saying some guy told him his game wasn't a "real game" because it was in 2D

Another example would be Face Noir, graphically, it looks like a PS2 game imo, which isn't bad considering it was made by just two people. But watching the IGN and Gamespot trailers on youtube... well... just read the comments]just read the comments. The irony is, if they went for Lucasarts or a 90s Sierra pixelated 2D look chances are they wouldn't have gotten this sort of criticism (or at least not as strong as we see here).

This is why I feel there's not much room for developers. Sure they can create a graphical look similar to Machinarium or Giana Sisters, which is great if that's what they were aiming for. But I'm of the opinion that currently there is a middle ground indie developers simply cannot fall into, basically either make your game 2D, 2.5D or 2D-ish, or make it AAA, if it looks like a PS1 or a PS2 game chances are you're going to get all sorts of backlash (even Minecraft was very criticized for its graphics at first, though thankfully it got over that hurdle).

P..S. No harm done, sorry if I was agressive too :)

Nonetheless, still indie and still retro styled.