SE, the dev team needs some more resources.

[Lauront]

Thats complex problem, but for fixing any of that - they need bigger team. Maybe even building new engine from the scratch is better idea, than trying to explain new workers how this 1.0 frankenstein works.
But the real question is why our textures is so bad, modders can give us 2k textures on faces, but devs somehow can't? Maybe its a good idea to hire freelancers outside of Japan?

That last thing is potentially what they're trying their best to avoid and why this is such a difficult issue to solve. Reading between the lines, it seems to be an issue of resource availability (as in, they have the money but even so they can't find the requisite manpower given the terms under which they want to hire them.) As to why modders can do it, whereas it presents a challenge for them, well I imagine that is because of the sheer scale of assets that would need to be converted and then made to fit on the existing models. They did not future proof the stuff they created so it is not an easy matter to resolve... but all the same, I'd like to see it happen.

He keeps semi-joking about how he'd love to take a meteor to it all again. I wish he would!

The shards and the Source all need to be rejoined, after all >: )...