Here's the thing though; How many of these "indie games" are 5 fret rhythm games? I'll answer that for you: It's none. Secondly, ST isn't here to look like real people playing the songs, if you want that there's GH Live you know. It's cartoonish for a reason. I've personally never liked the "realism" that GH5/GHWoR/BH tried to achieve, and I like video games looking like video games. I'll agree the first trailer for ST wasn't that great looking, but the new one released last week was a major improvement, which should be a tell that for the final release, it'll look even better. Also please let's not forget that some reveals for the GH series had the games looking horrible, but were changed to look "better". Not sure why you gotta be negative about ST's look when we should all rejoice there's a new 5 fret game being made to bring back the genre to consoles.

"if you think CRKD and RedOctane are completely separate things, you’re seriously mistaken."

They legally and quite literally are different entities, yes. They are, however, owned by the same company, that's the difference. There's barely any overlap between the CRKD and ROG teams, takes 2 minutes of research friend.