I wish they'd make more games that have unique art styles.

Agreed, it really depends on the game. Battlefield with Art Stylized graphics would look terrible, just like how if Final Fantasy was done with Realistic graphics would be weird.

High-fidelity and artfully stylized aren't, but photorealism is like... a photo.

Don't make me point at the TitanFall 2 and MGSV sign again.

Its just that that's hard for developers to develop, for management to allow, so, instead, use horrifically unoptimized UE5!

This works for a tech demo if you want to show off a new rendering engine or a new GPU. But yeah, if you base the whole game around that, it's like those movies with more CGI than plot.

Hah. Remember in the Xbox 360 era when everything looked like it was wrapped in saran wrap? I hated that so much. It's like - some if not most objects are not that reflective. Yes light bounces off of things, but it's such an "all or none" solution. Things in real life are so much more diffused.

I mean, effects like these have their time and place as well. Looking for a sci-fi setting in a distant future where these robots coming fresh out the factory like that? Cool. But I get your sentiment, if everything just looks like this because it just can and no conceptual thought goes into it, it’s crap.

When reflections became a thing in graphics, they were the new hotness. But unfortunately they're overused because people seem to think that reflections are the best indicator of graphical realism. They're a factor for sure, but overly reflective isn't the same as realistic reflections

In this world, there is no dust or dirt and everything looks like an early 2000’s Apple product.

Rule #1: Never get out of the car

something that often looks "photorealistic" today will look really dated in a few years

Check the overall vibe of game cube games VS ps2/xbox. N64 VS PS1. Colourful pretty games stand the test of time way better than realism.

Wow had been interesting lately. The last expansion I played, there were legitimately zones that I thought “I can’t believe this is wow” compared to the vanilla zones. You can still tell after a moment, but it is just a lot more detailed. I do love the point you make here. It reminded me of my first experience with uncanny valley in a game. I prefer not to have that experience tbh.

something that often looks "photorealistic" today will look really dated in a few years.

I'm fairly certain that with AI framegen and he hyperfocus on raytracing this paradigm is broken. Were going from consecutive titles looking better to stagnation while only projects with some breathing room in production will advance visually. (E.g. new witcher).

Plague tale (requiem in particular) is also ridiculously beautiful on mid range GPUs. I couldn't believe my graphic card was able to do that. It's a shame games reviews and screenshots don't account for average setups because that's what most of us have and some developers deserve praise to make it work for us.

Anyone who says photorealism and stylized art are mutually exclusive needs to play Clair Obscur, then delete their comment

There are several games who we're just "this looks like reality" when they released who have aged well too. Half-life 2 (even without the updates) being the first one I think of, but I also think the first Far Cry and Crysis look amazing even now. Good design will age well no matter, the only thing that goes away is the immediate excitement of how impressively real it looks for the ones that went for that, but they still stir something inside people who experience them for the first time decades later.