Former Thief designer Randy Smith Evergreen has commented on the graphics "arms race", joking that photorealism could have topped out with 2010's Alan Wake.
Personally, I see graphics and gameplay as separate dimensions. Great games are more about gameplay than graphics, but I still love beautiful games like Subnautica, or that Horizon VR game (which was a meh game but I enjoyed just looking around when I first started playing). Though games can also be beautiful without going just for photorealism, like Valheim.
That said, at some point it becomes more interesting as a tech demo than a game when going for extreme photorealism. You don’t even notice the difference between realistically simulated hair vs simply simulated hair except for a few cases (like it would probably be good in a porn game), other than the framerate hit.
And then there’s the direction nvidia wants to go in where it’s not photorealism but highly detailed slop.
Personally, I see graphics and gameplay as separate dimensions. Great games are more about gameplay than graphics, but I still love beautiful games like Subnautica, or that Horizon VR game (which was a meh game but I enjoyed just looking around when I first started playing). Though games can also be beautiful without going just for photorealism, like Valheim.
That said, at some point it becomes more interesting as a tech demo than a game when going for extreme photorealism. You don’t even notice the difference between realistically simulated hair vs simply simulated hair except for a few cases (like it would probably be good in a porn game), other than the framerate hit.
And then there’s the direction nvidia wants to go in where it’s not photorealism but highly detailed slop.