Quote - Okay so let me see if I got this... Both Hedd and Tony say that going with a low poly mesh, then baking the texture is preferable to sculpting a detailed high poly mesh. So what determines quality?

you burn a high "lets say a million" polycount displacement map for a 20.000 polycount SubD character.
displacement maps will rase the polycount to a million at render time.
normal maps will keep the polycount at 20.000 at render time.

you burn  a high polycount normal map for a 3000 polycount game character.
so the polycount stays at 3000 but looks like a million polycount character

The killer details ya see in zBrush gallery is from high polycount meshes.
zBrush will go to a billion polycount mesh.but they would be a real pain to rig & impossible to use real time so we keep the polycount low and use normal maps.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance