I think it's better when games don't look realistic.

I think the most interesting example is Red Dead Redemption 2. I don’t like its gameplay, but…

It still looks better than most recent AAA games, mainly due to art direction and attention to detail.

But I disagree that graphical improvements made older games look worse. Most PS2 games looked bad from the beginning because they used mostly shades of grey and brown trying to look realistic.

Games that were designed with the graphical limitations in mind still look great today, for example The Wind Waker and Kingdom Hearts.

The last breakthrough that happened recently and i still don't see very often is the unreal 5 clothes and hair physics that prevent compenetrations. Not strictly graphics but it improves it a lot.

Dont think this is an unpopular opinion. I can happily play most any game made in the last 15 years and be pretty happy, and if the OG game was pretty plain there's always modders (like, morrowind/system shockn2 or freespace mods make a huge difference for that age of game) I was just watching GDQ today and surprised by well some games over a decade old just look... Perfectly fine. I find myself Turing rtx on and off a bit to figure out what difference it's actually making - i believe rtx is a bigger win forndev workload than the quality increase for gamers. (Don't get me wrong, full glass/water/puddke reflections are incredible, but it's a lot of $$$ for the visual jump)

I agree, though I feel like we're still pushing way too high fidelity on modern titles, and the performance kind of suffers.

The technology can definitely improve, but more in terms of improving efficiency and scalability. Give the technology to more people to work with.

I think graphics are better and worse. Higher resolution and framerates, and higher resolution textures and enhamcements. But also grainy and flickery and fuzzy on the edges and certain details like hair, depending on the game and the tech it's using. For example, Sniper Elite 5 has beautiful levels but I've never been able to get the AA looking decent. But games like Far Cry 6 and Starfield are much clearer.

I think it's possible to push the boundaries a bit more but the cost to create a full world of detailed textures is just too much.