@Thorvald:

I gave this game aesthetics a thought and figured it is sort of a choice that I make. High quality textures and materials that look good are usually hidden behind different paywalls or services. So I end up creating them myself from different sources like my phone camera, and it really can't look much better unless the source is good enough. I could buy some good 16k photoscan textures just to have a few. I don't think I have even a decent library of 4k ones now :D Maybe I will.

With that said; A side 7 fan game - that would be cool :) I think it certainly would be possible to do something like that, if we set out to do it. It sounds like fun to me! You have my full permission to set up such a project :)

@Cynicallia:

Thank you! The process is hard to figure out - yeah. When you have done standard texturing for a while, it becomes a limitation and next step is really not straight forward at all. Zbrush tried to solve this by having a 2.5d mode where you paint directly on a canvas with your sculpt, but its is so weird (imo) and niche it takes on a near cultist level of dedication to learn how to use it. Happy mistakes are far easier than doing what you intend on doing there :D

I realized after posting this it may have been a little too rough. Then I guess not every experiment to find that one pipeline that I want to use is a success, so it makes sense to show how a progression is made over time. 

@Agondray:

My automatic answer would be "learn Blender" but it is more complicated than that depending on a multitude of things.

I think the shortest path is Unreal Engine and then Zbrush. Coding C++ in general is something outside of the scope of of most artists but also demanded if you want to do anything beyond a "simple" visual presentation.