there's a ton of great art happening in games these days. and a lot of it comes down to a few factors, there are some excellent concept art outsourcing houses (

there's a ton of great art happening in games these days. and a lot of it comes down to a few factors, there are some excellent concept art outsourcing houses (check out opusartz for one) the tools and artists trained in them are EXTREMELY capable in recreating whatever style, and the technology available for real time can basically do a fantastic job at baking down extremely high poly high res assets to whatever the final system requires. this is not to diminish artists working today. (I'm one of them!) Adrian Carmack though, comes from a whole other breed of creators who had to be both artistically brilliant as well as technically resourceful enough to create art within EXTREMELY tight constraints. the menagerie for doom, which he is responsible for are still a masterwork in readability, efficiency of design, and communication of purpose in many ways (the textures in that game very easily still hold up today) I work with a ton of amazingly talented artist, and still, it's rare that I see both artistic, illustrative, and technical talent all in one person. (helps that teams are enormous and so those skills can be spread amongst multiple people)