It's more complicated than that too imo. Before Broken Sword 3 was released, Charles Cecil said they had always wanted the game to be 3D (https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/17561). So it's likely that hand drawn 2D (pixelated or not) was often used because of limitations also. It's further possible that developers chose point and click as the medium because of technical limitations (e.g. it's easier to draw/render static scenes than develop a 3d engine). Evidence of this is - further to the death of 2D at this time as you point out - the fact that point and click died also as a genre at this time, as 3d modelling tools and third party 3d engines were becoming more accessible.

I think this same dynamic applies to many old styles in gamedev that are now seen as having an aesthetic quality when really they arose out of necessity (e.g. 8-bit era pixelation, ZX spectrum colour palates, dithered transparency)

So arguably if developers are choosing hand drawn now or P&C, it's perhaps the first time that it's the "harder" option, rather than being a return to "normal"

A lot of 2D games today are built with 3D engines, and use modern GPU-assisted tech like shaders for lighting and effects. The path to better 2D needed to pass through a 3D phase just for the tooling.

Tooling is where I think the games industry stores most of its culture. The studios burn through a generation of devs within a decade, so it's risky to leave it in their heads.

Which doesn’t mean you should keep a CRT around, those things are way too heavy.