Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis?

Also I'm having a problem figuring this reasoning out. It's not like not making a town meant they didn't make other places. The only stuff in towns which is different is writing NPCs and VAing them, but that's not graphical. Plenty of graphical elements already exist for towns and I'm really not convinced that what they didn't already have amounted to so much work that it was unfeasible.