Anyone Remembered the original draft of the RotN project?

Of course we remember. I wouldn't say that this was "dropped" so much, more that they were simply scrolling images. The goal was of course to do a 2.5/3D game, and so 2D stills as background wasn't going to be a thing.

That said, I have a strong feeling that they will be visiting actual 2D again in the future - they've noted during RotN's development how much more natural and in some ways easier it is for them to work in 2D instead. It comes with its own huge amount of work and challenges, but the 3D in Unreal Engine proposed its own significant hurdles to the development.

That said, I doubt they'll completely drop all the work that's already been done for RotN since much of that could be used for more games. We very well could see more of both, hopefully making more groups of people happy. I'm a 2D guy myself, but there are also many people out there (especially younger generations) who do really appreciate the modern 3D approaches and the customization options that come with it.