@Kyonko802 video game graphics that are going for realism will never be the "best looking game ever." art style is what makes a game's graphics last, and that's why so many are so nostalgic for the 16-bit era graphics because the art on display in a lot of those games was absolutely stunning. and there's a reason why so many indie horror games love using the ps1 aesthetic.
this intense focus on realism is part of what balloons video game budgets.
i've NEVER seen a game have water that looks as good as mario sunshine's does and that game is on the FUCKING GAMECUBE.
@berkberkman @Kyonko802 you can upscale those games right up to 1080p and, minus the old textures (mainly HUD ones), they still look amazing. it was the perfect time where there were still limitations but graphics were starting to heat up.
nintendo in general does a really good job with their art styles being more important than the realism, to the point where there are games that just look like they are copying their art style, which you can't say of these realistic graphics because a leaf will look like a leaf no matter what.
a great example of a game with realistic graphics but one that is still more stylistically driven is ghost of tsushima. look at this shit and tell me it's not better than horizon or hellblade.
You can play some mid-Xbox One era game from say 2015 like Halo 5 or CoD IW (during the brief period when the CoD brand flirted with future esque games instead of making another arcade FPS with "realistic" graphics) and while those are mid as fuck games gameplay wise, visually they're very impressive. I'm talking colored lighting, 60fps, and interesting art styles. People were angry that Tango Gameworks got shut down becuase Hi-Fi Rush, as much as it had some of the western poz creeping in, absolutely looked nothing like what Sony was making or the turd known as Starfield.
Sony (and many western AAA devs) on the other hand's worst part was that the games themselves were rather Hollywood-esque games. They want mass market games for the typical normie to play and to wow the normies, who want the same game yearly and to play for a few months before moving onto the next slop. The Soulja Boy MW3 video is a good example of the kind of shit that AAA studios want to see, a normie thinking WOW IT'S SO REAL. Of course it's a game made based on 2011 Hollywood, so it happens to age and seem less cringe than say, trans racers in your race car driving game with shitty aesthetics slapped on it.