I think that brief history of the game leaves off the fact that base era was utterly dominated by big basics. The extreme amount of disruption available in particular made it hard to play any evolution decks, the only exceptions were Blastoise which only worked because of how good Super Energy Removal was, and Wigglytuff, which was played in conjunction with big basics anyways. Keeping in mind 'big' back then was 70hp and the magic damage number was 40.
I don't think that it's an accident that BW started to look like base era again. The horrors of Neo caused quite a few people to quit and I think that moving back towards the base set style of play was their way of bringing players back, and at least coincidentally it seems to have worked. The game's bigger than at any time since base era. People seem to enjoy the fast style of play, and I don't think the game is actually angling at slowing down.
Sure, there are evolution GX cards (keep in mind that most of the stage 2 GX are actually pretty bad and not played much, excepting Decidueye and Solgaleo), but there are also, still, lots of big basic GX cards that hit hard and are in fact even bulkier on average than EX basics, and plenty of new acceleration options from aqua patch/wish baton/Kiawe guarantees that there will still be fast decks well into the future, even after a highly restrictive 2017 rotation.
I think a lot of the reprint happiness can be chalked up to the very odd system they have where Japan and the international scene play fundamentally different formats which makes it harder to design cards. I think Garb is definitely needed in Japan where they have to deal with seeker/shaymin/sycamore/ultra ball engine until 2018/19, but we lose seeker next rotation which pokes a massive hole in the stale staple deck engine anyways. And now we have Garb casting a shadow over any item heavy standard deck concepts for several years.