I've wondered this myself, cause there are so many pixel art games being made now, I could see the market feeling over saturated with them. But I'm really excited for Hyperlight Drifter, which has amazing pixel art.
Gods May Be Watching was a really interesting game with pixel art. It has a level where you're tortured, that would have been very difficult to get watch with hyper realistic art. With pixel art, it felt brutal without being completely unbearable. I'm considering doing something like this in my next game. Not similar gameplay, just the mix of simple art in a brutal world.
I see where you are going, but that is down to what you show of this brutal scene in the more realistic version. A scene can transport the full horror and brutality without really showing anything directly. Clever use of close ups of faces, sound and scenery, as well as symbolic images will do the job just as well (altough this is highly culture dependant, not many people outside of Japan or without knowledge of the culture will get what falling cherry blossom leaves mean for example).
Pixelart might be another way to make the brutality less direct, but to me at least, it is a much more clumsy way. On the other hand, you actually need to work harder to make the player getting the same sense of connection to the characters, as they are often devoid of human emotion and subtleness without some helpers (like emoticons or close up images of their faces conveying their emotions while they speak in some RPGs).
Especially for a title that should convey a story that should resonate with players, a pixelartist has to work a little bit harder than somebody who can use realistic 3D graphics. Just a little bit, because even on video, conveying emotions and storytelling in a believable way is not as easy as some movie directors make it look like.
