It seems like this image has hit a cultural pulse. When things like this happen it's always fascinating to me. I see the image and my imagination is captured. It's nostalgic, adventurous, reminds me of classic fantasy while still feeling modern and novel.

I think your average millennial guy is craving something hand made. Movies used to feel hand made with real props and practical monsters. Games used to feel hand made with hand pixeled art, or hand painted textures. Music felt hand made with real instruments. Now everything feels virtual, generated, fake and gay.

Look at games like Ultima Underworld, Lands of Lore 1 and 2, Daggerfall, Might & Magic 6, 7 and 8, Gothic, Morrowind, Everquest, World of Warcraft, basically all fantasy games until we hit the modern PBR 3D workflow... they had this feeling of handcrafted nature. Even if they were realistic, they felt hand made. Watching NPCs in Gothic gesture around and jabber their low poly mouths with cheap but soulful voice acting is somehow more immersive to me than watching the mocapped mannequins of Ghost of Tsushima blurt out the most boring generic nonsense by highly paid voice actors.

It's like the closer games get to reality, the further they feel from captivating us. Being 99% away from a simulated person feels worse than a clearly hand drawn representation of a simulated person. The art is gone.

I think that's why so many people see this image and there is a spark of imagination and excitement for a world that feels hand painted with pixels.