Yeah, we are definitely on the same page. What they did with classic Crash with minimal textures on the character, they also did the same thing with Mario in 64 and Banjo in Banjo-Kazooie.

You could do a similar approach to environmentals for a decent effect too, such as having the texture essentially act as a very restricted form of bump map for the vertex shaded polygon. Goldeneye did this a fair bit.

I would be interested in seeing this kind of art style make a return.