It's not like Nintendo can't afford to push the graphic limits for Zelda games. They just had to be cheap about it.

The reason that they try not to be realistic is so that their game doesn't become dated. If you were to look at say, Dark Souls, you can see that they tried to be super realistic, but now it's dated. If you were to avoid the realism, then you can have a game like Team Fortress 2 (a game that's 17 years old) that has cartoon-esque graphics, then it can stay relatively timeless. If you care that much about graphics, then why don't you buy the PS5 pro.

Old school Zelda is still goated BTW