I agree; it's just uninspired, poor artwork. Preferring the EGA style doesn't make the VGA art not bad. I might go so far as to say it's objectively bad.. You could almost certainly get a consensus on that from a group of talented artists..
I don't think they spent much money on the remaster. There are tons of these though all the way to now. Remasters that fail to capture the original art direction and substitute middling art.
Within the past decade there are more and more good remaster examples. Studios seem to be putting more money into them, and better talent is involved.
Like the remaster of The Day of the Tentace... The original has a vaguely German Expressionist (from 1920s films) look that I like. The artists of the remaster smoothed out many of the harsh edges, apparently assuming that they were only due to technical limitations. Technical limitations, like in the old movies, influenced the style, sure... but it works the way it was initially created and ignorant "improvements" don't do it any good.
This kind of modernization can be done right... Jim Burton movies and Babylon Berlin borrowed from German expressionism, especially in certain scenes - often night scenes. Tentacle is somewhere in between - the artists could have taken their inspiration from looking at the Caligari (1920) - Batman (1989) - Babylon Berlin scale and some 30s cartoons.
Disclaimer: I cannot art for shit. I can only look and talk about it.
I don't think they spent much money on the remaster. There are tons of these though all the way to now. Remasters that fail to capture the original art direction and substitute middling art.
Within the past decade there are more and more good remaster examples. Studios seem to be putting more money into them, and better talent is involved.