There are a number of theories why gamers have turned their backs on realism. One hypothesis is that players got tired of seeing the same artistic style in major releases.

Whoosh.

We learned all the way back in the Team Fortress 2 and Psychonauts days that hyper-realistic graphics will always age poorly, whereas stylized art always ages well. (Psychonauts aged so well that its 16-year-later sequel kept and refined the style, which went from limitations of hardware to straight up muppets)

There's a reason Overwatch followed the stylized art path that TF2 had already tread, because the art style will age well as technology progresses.

Anyway, I thought this phenomena was well known. Working within the limitations of the technology you have available can be pushed towards brilliant design. It's like when Twitter first appeared, I had comedy-writing friends who used the limitation of 140 characters as a tool for writing tighter comedy, forcing them to work within a 140 character limitation for a joke.

Working within your limitations can actually make your art better, which just complements the fact that stylized art lasts longer before it looks ugly.

Others speculate that cinematic graphics require so much time and money to develop that gameplay suffers, leaving customers with a hollow experience.

Also, as others have pointed out, it's capitalism and the desire for endless shareholder value increase year after year.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a perfect example. A technical achievement that is stunningly beautiful where they had to cut tons of planned content (like wall-running) because they simply couldn't get it working before investors were demanding that the game be put out. As people saw with the Phantom Liberty, given enough time, Cyberpunk 2077 could have been a masterpiece on release, but the investors simply didn't give CD Project Red enough time before they cut the purse strings and said "we want our money back... now." It's a choice to release too early.

...but on the other hand it's also a choice to release too late after languishing in development hell a la Duke Nukem Forever.

[–] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Borderlands 1 and 2 still look great in comparison to a lot of games that came out around the same time. The stylized cel-shaded textures help hide the lower-poly environments and really make the world stand out. Most games at the time were trying to go for a "realistic" look that just resulted in bland brown and gray environments that look terrible.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

Shout out to Borderlands 1, one of the last game to have some of the best comedy delivered by text, instead of audio.

I actually am in the minority of preferring 1 over 2 because 2 is just so fucking loud. Handsome Jack in my fucking ear for hours on end, refusing to shut the fuck up and let me play the game.

I much much much preferred the quiet reading of Borderlands 1.

[–] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I honestly feel like this with Genshin Impact. It looks absolutely breathtaking and in 20 years it will still be beautiful. It runs on a damn potato. I personally like the lighting in a lot of scenes way better than the lighting in some titles that have path tracing.

I have always liked art styles in games better than realism.

[–] stephen01king@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In what world does Genshin runs well on a potato? Unless you have a different definition of potato than me. My Galaxy S10e can barely play the game, and it's not even slow enough to be called a potato

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Might be talking within the context of PC gaming, where even a relative potato will beat the performance of a flagship phone.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Probably is, but I get why the other fella was confused by this.

Until right this moment I was under the impression that Genshin was literally just a phone game. Looks like I was wrong.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/genshin-impact

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago

Haha, opposite experience for me! I don't play it but know some people that do, and I only ever heard about them playing it on their PCs, so it was their comment that made me realize it was also available on phones :P

[–] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah i was talking about pc haha. I don't keep very up to date with phones and don't know much about their performance.

[–] HollowNaught@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Sure, but I'm still going to say "fuck mihoyo"

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 21 points 2 days ago

Unfortunately, Cyberpunk is exactly the kind of product that is going to keep driving the realistic approach. It's four years later now and the game's visuals are still state-of-the-art in many areas. Even after earning as much backlash on release as any game in recent memory, it was a massively profitable project in the end.

This is why Sony, Microsoft, and the big third parties like Ubisoft keep taking shots in this realm.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 days ago

Just wanna throw Windwaker into the examples of highly stylized art style games that aged great.