[manasecret]

It's hard to make them mutually exclusive. Even super realistic games have some art style to them, by the simple fact the game designers choose what items and colors are in the game. But, if we're to try putting them at two opposite extremes:

1. Super realistic graphics, but with no art style. Imagine bland colors and objects -- like an office building, but hyper-realistic.

2. Artistically stunning graphics -- but no realism. Imagine Picasso cubism, where you have a very difficult time figuring out what's going on, but the art of it is amazing.

No, there's just no way to figure out the two extremes that are completely mutually exclusive from each other. Either way, you're begging the question. With realistic graphics, you have to assume something bad about it (in my case, "bland colors" etc.). Of course no one is going to vote for bland colors. But on the other hand, a perfectly rendered sunset mountain scene would be impossible to be bland. The same thing with artistically stunning graphics. In my case, I assume the lack of realism makes it hard to know what's happening. Who wants to play a game like that? But what makes perfectly artistic graphics have to lack realism and be hard to tell what's going on? In all cases, extremely realistic games have some art direction, and extremely artistic looking games have some realism to them.

So how do you choose one over the other, when you can't separate the two?

EDIT: Or I guess you can go with concrete examples, which are fair game. But again, to take your example of Twilight Princess vs. Wind Waker. Twilight Princess does have art direction, and a very good one (IMO) at that. And Wind Waker has very good realism on top of its artistic style. The boat is rendered realistically, it moves realistically, the water is rendered and moves realistically, etc.