The main problem with every game trying to look "realistic" is that they look boring because they all look the same because of a lack of a distinct artstyle.

Art direction > Ultra Realism

Clarity and playability above all else, and then you have the eye candy

graphics or realism can never replace gameplay and plotlines. sure they're enhancing but not a replacement.

A game can be realistic and fun. When i play games like uncharted 4 and alan wake 2 admiring their graphics is part of the fun for me

definitely do not want yellow paint all over my game. regardless of graphics.

Thats why i love games like Elden Ring. 5 years from now game will still look amazing and feel good to play, just like dark souls 3. Art style will beat realism for me easily anyday

I love realistic graphics but damn the visual clarity is terrible in most titles. Horizon Forbidden West is graphically superior to Breath of the Wild for example, but the visual clarity in HFW is all over the place with so many particles and effects in the air making everything look grainy or sometimes there is so much detail in a small area that you don't even know what to see causing eye fatigue, this is something that doesn't happen to me in BOTW where everything looks "clean" so to speak due to its simplicity but with a very well-implemented artistic style..

*If playing on a monitor I want the traditional way of playing, if playing on VR I want a more "realistic" version of the game*

Your dog just sat its butt on your pillow... You're going to get pinkeye.

Yo Vex... your channel has grown quite a lot... been watching you since you had less than 500 subs. Keep it up bro. 💛

"I don't even have a 4090." My man - Vex!

About 2 years ago i was actively playing mw3 on my ps3 because i had nothing else. I was Having fun everyday. At that point I thought if I buy a PC that can play the latest games on Max Graphics I'll have even more fun.But in the end it just meant that I tested all sorts of games, rarely finished anything and somehow can no longer get any satisfaction from video games. + I still played a lot of mw3 original on my pc either so nothing changed

No one staring at the graphics and fancy reflections all day. We need great storyline, optimized games and stable online servers.

This is what I've been repeating for a long time. I couldn't care less about "realism" in a game and it looking "realistic". If I wanted realistic stuff simulating life-like stuff I would play a simulator, not a game. Games are supposed to be fun, out-of-the-box from our reality and distraction, artistic, otherworldly, an escape from the world where you can be who you want or do what you want depending on the game, it's a GAME, it can be anything, not to imitate every single detail of the real world, simulators exist for that. Good graphics are fine, yeah, and can make things more engaging for most people because of the immersion, but full-on life-like graphics? No, save that for simulators or make an option to mod the game into what you want, to look like a game or real-world characteristics inside a computer like the movie "Gamer" which is literally real life but people control other people in a video game in the real world.

Amazing for screenshots ( and thumbnails )

4:40 the first game I experienced with yellow paint is Dying light where yellow paints or fabric are scattered around to passively guide players around the game.

I am both hands on the same deck with you here Vex. With all the marvels of modding and ray tracing, I still find good visuals in the hierarchy to be lower than functionality. For example, properly baked graphics that are - first and foremost - clear, playable and visible are much more important than fidelity because at the end of the day when playing a game you will enjoy these visuals for a moment (which is like 3 maybe 4 hours). After that it's just you, the gameplay and all the inconveniences of hyperrealism, including the fact that you're probably either overpaying for a gpu or butchering the one that you have. What people oftentimes don't realize is that practical application of visuals is way more important then momentary awe that stems from top-notch graphical fidelity. Modders seem to suffer from this mentality that kind of enforces overly saturated, contrasted or monochrome color grading. More than that, I remember what games used to look like 15 years ago and some them were dead-awful with the amount of blur, bloom and other effects like that. Masking imperfections is one thing, another is obstructing the practicality of visuals in favor of fake realism.

2:32 💀 Not the casual gamer roast, Vex

If you think all forests are that dense, you have never or rarely entered a forest. It’s the opposite, the outside of a forest is dense but inside it’s empty at ground level because the light is stopped by the canopy. It’s the case for both tempered forests and rainforests. I’ve gone off trail in both.

agree i really like that cozy lighting effects in drinking booths and pubs and also contrasty lit up and dark parts of alleys and all that

I like realism. But I like style even more.

How do you not like this settings/graphics? I frucking LOVE them, if I could I'd have every game this realistic. I'd love to play games like "The Witcher 3" and like every JRPG looking this good. I'd "jeez in my pants" if I got my games looking like this all of a sudden.🤤

The most important thing is to make a game good first

It's stuff like this I constantly keep in mind when tweaking Minecraft shaders

Love your videos Vex! Also, What's the name of the soundtrack you used @ 3:24? sounds like a final fantasy or xenoblade chronicles soundtrack but I don't remember the exact name, help

Depth of field and motion blur are the only graphic options I always turn off because it looks better without them. RT usually looks a bit better when it's on, but not that much better to justify the performance drop, so I just let it stay turned off.

I agree with this 1000%. And I'm glad you made a video about this, Vex!

@7:45 you convinced me at depth of field. I do not like blur in my games. Be it for foreground or the background. Which will be a problem in VR and 3D without glasses options for games... @13:24 unless you are playing AR games. Cool story bro. I subbed.

Never noticed the yellow paint except in RE4. I noticed red one on Mirror's Edge and white paint on a ton of games (Indika has it recently) but damn why do I just notice the yellow paint right now 😂

You can use the realistic lighting and color mod without raytracing.

I've played through the entire Cyberpunk game 4 times already. At this point I am really more interested in making it great looking and take screenshots, rather than replaying it again (of course, will do it again sometime). After using only AMD gpus for ever since I got my first gaming PC, last year I switched to Nvidia specifically to be able to enjoy Cyberpunk with maxed graphics and Path Tracing. Couldn't afford 4090, but got a pretty good deal on 4080.

Bro doesn't even havaa 4090 🤯

Nothing can beat the timeless beauty of pre rendered graphics

only reason ill do this is to impress my parents and friends but i prefer stylized games like borderlands 3

The only game where I've ever felt like Depth of Field enhanced the experience was Alien: Isolation. When using the motion tracker, you had to manually toggle your focus between the tracker and your surroundings. You could turn DoF off, but having to constantly make that tradeoff of what to focus on while trying to avoid the alien really ratcheted up the tension.

Whether we like it or not.... games has, is and will always become more and more realistic. That's how we went from crapy/boxy/pixilated graphics to what we have today.

Where can you get safe mods or do they not exist, I have a 24gb 7900xtx and if I'm not dropping frames but getting better graphics I don't mind a few frames,, Thanks Vex Top Show have been watching a bit now just subscribed..👍

okay, but, about the blurriness, do you imagine what it would look like if this mod supported VR eye tracking to render it sharp where you're looking? Just like PSVR2 does on the horizon call of the mountain. I think this would have fixed the inability to see some areas clearly (not considering the over-darkened areas).

I want realistic detailed 8k textures in games without the blurring

Listen the yellow paint sucks but if they don’t put it in I will be lost for 3 hours. Jedi survivor gives me a whole map and I still feel like a blind mouse sniffing cheese.

When mentioning Visual Clutter, it reminds me when my friend showed me Forspoken, when the first gameplay was revealed. It was like pitchforks in my eyes. Constant particles everywhere on every hit, movement, jump or such. I thought the fighting look cool, for sure, cos i'm into powered fighting, like Infamous, however, Forspoken instantly pushed me away with it's Visual Clutter. It obstructed the gameplay beyond my belief

Ironically, the only time Path Tracing actually makes a big enough difference imo is when implemented in very old or simplistic games like Quake, Minecraft, Doom or Portal BUT the thing is that it also requires an update to textures and ingame objects, surfaces to give that wow look. Path tracing alone does not achieve that wow look AND fps still plumets.

Ultimately have the photo realism effect is another option at game devs disposal and gives them another option regarding a game’s visual style and consumers another mod choice which is great imo!😱😳🤯🥳👍

As someone who owns a 4090. I can no longer afford games.

Rendering DOF is honestly so great for vr. Lets you run some crazy intensive vr games with midrange hardware.

10:38 i like cooler colors so the "realistic" one is better in my eyes

Back in the 90's we were all losing our minds over Doom. Was it realistic, oh hell no! Was it damn good fun, can I get a hell yeah!?

The Fun Pimps got the "communicating directions" right with 7 Days to Die. They implemented a guide system through their POIs via light sources. If you see a torch, a lantern, a lit bulb, a candle, anything that is lit up, that is the way to go. It meshes perfectly with the game world and hints at the way to progress. The fact of the matter is, yellow paint is a cheat used by lazy devs who either do not know how to design an environment to be clear in which way to go, or don't have the ingenuity to design indicators that blend into the game world, or don't care to put in the effort to figure any of it out.

I've seen these type of videos and some of these are soo good, but I would never play like that, because I feel like the not 100% realistic colors and effects fit the game way better! Also its CYBERPUNK there is almost no need to make it look even better

Another good video!

First person driving is a lot better than third person in VR with high fov. But without that.. yeah third person is better. Eye tracking and VR with that fuzzing.. could help a whole lot with improving performance too. dynamic foveated rendering for the win! Seems to me like you could replace paint with something that fits storyline.. incorporate things into cyberpunk like the HUD is eye implants or contacts or use magic spells or Red Dead style tracking to find where to go next. Also for VR: Try Vorpx or Depth3d reshade.. I bet that viewers would love to hear about it.

The color hue in Cyberpunk is important to create cyberpunk mood, it is an artistic decision. Making it real life, well it is good for people who never own a car.

That thumbnail is from Driveclub, a 10 years old game and it looks amazing ngl.

at least in minecraft there are some shader mods that allow you to adjust the torch lighting but

this leads me to think, that devs knowws how to evoke emotions through colors and sound. they know when to show which scene when, and which location inside the game when. not only emoke emotion, but also to trigger our satisfactory hormone.

Speak for yourself, full PT slaps! Yet to play a more gorgeous game than Cyberpunk with it on, the fact that it works everywhere without any effort from the devs makes it the future.

That's why I like Zelda BOTW and Zelda TOTK so much. Its graphics are good enough and the entire focus of the game is not to leave you lost looking for what to do because there is always something interesting on the horizon.

I like rtx in Minecraft the rtx pack i use is a lot better with torch light but I do have to turn it off if I am trying to light my base up

i use this mod i had fun with it. but i get the point you make alan wake 2 looks amazing, i had the same issue in the forest and getting to the nursing home was a bih

Im thinking of building a new pc, but im unsure what gpu to run. I don't care about RTX, and could get tons of raster performance with an AMD card. The only draw for going nvidia is that DLSS is better than FSR. But as im not going to use raytrace, i shoudnt need to lean on FSR or DLSS anyway, when the top end AMD cards handle games at 1440p well above 100fps.

i don't know what focus on eye tracking would be lke, but it seems like the most functional way to play a game where you want what youre looking at to be in focus would be to make everything in focus so we can glance at whatever we like. the real world is always in focus in one sense (not counting our eye, thing don't become fuzzy when no one's around) it's just our eyes that make specific things in foccus, so do i want the game to recreate the world for my real eyes to look at or to recreate what my gmee eyes would see. i'd like to keep control of my real eyes 🙂

same with me. enonce enjoyed playing crashlands game more than sun haven. simply because they have lesser items to loot that i can actually focus on it.

The problem is the lack of contrast. This is a problem with 8-bit color. HDR is supposed to solve some of this problem by adding more bits to luminance/brightness. The real solution is 10-bit color. 12-bit color would even be better. But that sucks up bandwidth which means something has to give like resolution and/or frame-rate. This also points out that ray-tracing is a waste of time; if you want to see better, curated lighting is better.

Honestly I tend to think even the creative intent isn't contrasty enough for my taste. I tend to use Nvidia Freestyle, just press Alt F3 in any game, and turn on a color modifier and sharpening filter. Some games I've noticed just turning on the sharpening makes textures that otherwise look muddy suddenly look hyper realistic. Just a couple days ago I was gobsmacked by the rock texture they use on Tatooine in Lego Star Wars Skywalker Saga. I just end up using this in nearly every game now. Still wish the simulated ray tracing was in all games though. Only one I know of is FFXV

I have watched so many benchmarks, cyberpunk mostly, that I get turned off by the sound effects more than the visuals. I just turn off the benchmark once it comes on

Have u seen the nolvus v6 skyrim yet.

At the end of the day, gaming is all about immersion and having fun in a fantasy environment. And everyone has different preferences. And this is where technology comes in. We want to push games as close as we can possibly get to photorealism And once we have reached that point We have unlimited options. Now we can make and play games exactly how we want them. It's the freedom of choice. Do we want photo realistic illumination, lighting, shadows, camera movement, colors..etc? If not, We can choose to turn them off or lower certain settings. But we need to keep pushing technology in games to make them look and feel as real as possible to have the option to play games how we want to play them and have them look as real as we want them to look. Because, like I said, gaming is ultimately about the ultimate escapism. Having great immersion and fun And the more options the better.

Game design and graphics are two completely different things. Did it occur to you that maybe the trees were meant to be an environmental hazard? Having both the dual purpose of immersion and also acting as obstacles to prevent your ability to avoid attacks? Like it or not, that’s an example of good game design, not bad. Yes, depth of field is pretty much something I always turn off. It can’t be implemented well without eye tracking. And yellow paint makes the player feel like a child. However, and this is important, it’s a false dichotomy to say it’s either the yellow paint or be lost for hours. Ocarina of time, no yellow paint. Half life, no yellow paint. Baldur’s gate 3, no yellow paint. And think about when yellow paint is used in games. It’s used to show that some object can be interacted with. It’s the same concept when computers or switches in games are lit up as green or red to show they can be interacted with or not. These tools are used to improve game pacing. If you playing a game and you are in a room full of computers, do you want to interact with every computer to trigger the cutscene? Or would you like a handy green light that lets you know what to interact with? The problem with yellow paint is that it is too intrusive to the point it breaks immersion. NOT that it helps you know which way to go. There are plenty of other ways to subtly hint to the player on how to progress. The problem is that yellow paint isn’t subtle.

I really like for my game to look real AF. I turn off depth of field though, because my own eyes focus on what I'm actually looking at lol. And the devs might make make the game how they want it, but if I like it better how I want it, that's what I'm gonna choose every time. I'm never playing vanilla Skyrim ever again lol

I mean bluring the bike out isn't really how your eyes work. Your eyes blur anything not directly in the center of vision. The only way to mimic this in games is either with eye tracking or with 3D images like 3D displays or VR. It's sort of like motion blur. The human eye can track even extremely fast objects, but your eyes have to track it. It's actually more an extension of the same depth of field effect. I'd say these effects make graphics less like the human eye and more like a camera. They seem to more target making video games look like a cinema camera recording and less like vision as vision just isn't possible without actual depth.

I think being lost can be sometimes be a good thing the get the players thinking but being confused is a bad thing

When I was young, I used to play in the woods a lot One of the problems is you don't see where you're going a lot of times, except for what's right in front of the flashlight. God help you if you drop the flashlight, and it's off. Man, you're just literally stumbling through the woods. to say that you can't see in the woods when it's dark without a flashlight. It's an understatement. The video game is not as bad, even with it as good as it is. It still is not as bad as real life.

Jean Renoir says that “in the history of all the arts, the arrival of perfect realism has coincided with a perfect decadence.” I suggest watching a video on KZfaq where he argues this, it's called "Jean Renoir parle de son art 1961". V/O: We left off with the idea that dialogue is now irrevocably part of cinema, and we must be resigned to it and make the most of it. In addition to sound, the so-called "progress" in cinema: color, wide-screen, technical advances in filming, as well as in the way films are made. In the end, doesn't all this progress lead in the same direction, towards a more perfect realism? A technical realism. RENOIR: Of course. It's the same for all arts. We know that in the history of all arts, the arrival of perfect realism coincided with perfect decadence. Earlier, I used Greek art as an example. There are many examples. That one comes to mind. Forgive me if I repeat myself. For example, the art of tapestry. The first known tapestry was the Bayeux Tapestry. Queen Mathilde and her ladies passed their time weaving a tapestry while her husband William conquered England. Obviously,the wool she used was very primitive, probably greasy. The dyes were very primitive, probably vegetable-based, and some mineral-based. Only a limited palette of colors was used in this tapestry, yet this tapestry is probably one of the most beautiful in the world. Moving ahead several centuries, tapestries are still very primitive. For example, the Apocalypse tapestries of Angers. We see before us a marvelous world, not a dream world but a real world. The characters in the tapestry are modern. Every day on the street you meet people like the saints, kings, queens, sinners and angels in the tapestry. And God knows the technique was primitive! One fine day, good King Henry IV makes a huge blunder and kills the art of tapestry, kicks it in the head. With Sully. Which makes me wonder if the legends aren't complete fibs. Henry IV's stupidity about tapestry makes me doubt all the legends about his goodness. This is what he did. High-warp tapestry was invented, replacing low-warp, and it became possible to interweave the threads in a more subtle manner. At the same time, enormous progress had been made in dyes. The king decided to fund and elevate those making high-warp tapestries. The art of tapestry advanced, increasingly capable of imitating nature. Soon it was no longer necessary to simplify patterns for tapestries. They copied paintings, almost perfect likenesses of paintings by Boucher or Watteau. Today, tapestry is capable of total realism. Every shade is possible. Ten shades of green. All the shades of blue in the sky, from that of a pale cloud to deep blue. The outcome? Tapestry is finished. Now, artists like Lurçat try to artificially revive tapestry by shunning realism. Alas, something tragic occurs. It's an artificial attempt. It doesn't give us the Bayeux Tapestry. It sometimes makes me wonder whether man's gift for beauty isn't in spite of himself. His intelligence - What a devastating force! Intelligence is terrible. It makes us do stupid things. What if intelligence pushes us towards ugliness? What if intelligence makes us slaves, admirers of all that is ugly? What if our tendency to imitate nature is simply a tendency towards ugliness? The things we choose to imitate in nature aren't the most beautiful. I wonder whether in primitive times, all objects, not just art, were beautiful. It's a disturbing question. When we look at ancient Etruscan pottery, it's all beautiful. And don't tell me that every Etruscan potter was a genius! Why is it that when technique is primitive, everything is beautiful, and when technique is perfected, almost everything is ugly except things created by an artist talented enough to overcome technique? It's a disturbing question. This makes me wonder, in relation to our discussion on the performing arts - I wonder if our technical advances don't simply herald complete decadence. Technical perfection can only create boredom, because it only reproduces nature. Imagine we are able to perfectly recreate a forest with cinema. We can see the thickness of the bark on the trees. The screen is even larger. It surrounds the audience. We're really in the middle of the forest. We can touch the trees and smell the scent of the forest. There will be machines to emit the subtle odor of moss. What will happen? People will ride a scooter to a real forest and not to the movies. Why the hell would anyone go to a movie when they can have the real thing? So imitating nature can only lead to the death of an art form.

Idk if its just me but the higher fidelity we get to, the more I have a hard time separating what im looking at. Like, the more realistic a forest or foliage looks, and especially the higher fidelity and density it has, the harder it is to pick out objects or enemies from the background. Things that I normally would not have a problem picking out irl in the same circumstances. Im guessing its not just me since games have started to make anything of interest glow or have an outline, but its a shame because it makes some games very difficult to enjoy for me.

5:11 bros mesmerized by the plot

People forgot that video games were supposed to be games and are treating them like videos. My most played game looks like a little bit fancier Minecraft and my second most played is Euro Truck Sim. Following it is GTA 5/Online, came out a bit over 10 years ago for xBox 360 and PS 3 It isn't about the photorealistic graphics. In fact if your graphics truly are photorealistic (not just high definition, like you could actually mistake it for real life) I'm gonna mess around with brightness and contrast among other things. FOV is AT LEAST 90 (if it can go higher all the better), motion blur off, depth of field off. I don't want it realistic, I want good looking. I have realistic IRL

Got it to work in 4k on my 79xtx with uniscaler, more than comfy upscaling and rt tweaks. Turned it off pretty quick. Looks incredible, but is not fun.

3:40 black ops 2 vs black ops 3. 2 felt scarier than that game, something about lighting and ambience etc

Pac man doesn't have Ray tracing yet it's still fun

DoF will be the next graphical effect after motion blur I will turn it off then. :'D

At the end of the day, what Vex is saying is really just an opinion. Obviously nobody wants too much clutter or a lack of direction in the games they play, but otherwise, preferences vary. No matter how much you yap about how "graphically altering the game with mods will going to ruin your gameplay, dumbass!!! haven't you heard about developer's intent?!?!? important buzzword!", some genuinely like the changes in saturation, colour tone, and graphics that various mods bring. A lot of people love higher-res textures, higher poly counts, higher object density, and true-to-life lighting. A lot of people would gladly play at 60 fps rather than 120 fps to accommodate those preferences... most don't even care about hitting 120 fps in singleplayer titles in the first place since they actually go outside. On console, plenty even play at 30 fps over 60 fps because they care much more about fidelity than performance. And that's fine, as long as there are settings to satisfy both parties. If you don't like the changes in gameplay and performance that come with shader packs or Minecraft RTX, you can just, you know.... play the normal Minecraft.

Gameplay comes first. It's a entertainment medium... I always hated how realism is preached.

The problem (for me) with the realistic games can be resumed in 3 things: 1 - They just focus on real graphics (not gameplay) 2 - Usually it gets too dark/bright. 3- Not optimized (my potato turned into a baked potato) And with one of these it can really ruin your gameplay.

6:50 i think driving is "annoying" in first person, because most people just do full throttle and expect all games to have gta v physics where you stop and turn arround fast, I would let the player have the possibility to switch between GTA IV or GTA V physics when selecting the difficulty

The more realistic visually a game is, the most immersive gaming experience we ahve. Its way better to play in an immersive game than anything else. Though,that does NOT mean that we cant tweak a little bit some settings to always be able to see what's ahead in a dark cave, for instance. We can choose the level of realism if it helps our gaming exprerience. And about Pathtracing, lets give Nvidia 2 generations to improve GPU perfomance. It will gradually be accessible for midrange GPUs, just like raytracing become more and more today, compared to the first RTX generation. I could bet that with a RTX 7070 ti, retracing will be good and affortable for mid range PC gamers.. Till then, of course the technology is far ahead from our gear capabilities. And i want to point out a common error people do about game realism : You are giving us a reasoning error called the false dilemma fallacy. You ask if we want a realistic visual OR a great game. My answer is : Experiencing visual realism does not necessarily imply a less interesting gameplay. You can have both : Visual realism AND a great gameplay. These as not opposites.

Hey there I was actually asking Rx 6750 xt 16 gb Or 4060 ti 8Gb - 16Gb? Using for:Gaming-Streaming-content creation

Today I still play clash of clan,Red Alert2(mental omega). They don’t have “realistic” but they have more fun than many AAA game right now.

Speaking as an old gaymer cat, there's a general correlation between technical capacity and fluff. The more fluff you can afford, the more you put. But over time, the problem became that the fluff was weighing on the game rather than making it better. This isn't even just for computation only: when Final Fantasy VII came out on 3 CDs, everyone was amazed at the amount of content, and all the minigames they could put that "enhanced" the game. Except almost all of these minigames weren't fun. They were all removed in the later games because they just made the game less fun to play. The same has been happening since the 90s. This is why I'm so skeptical of new capacity or techniques like Raytracing: sure it CAN make the game better. But will it? To me, RT still seems like a cool concept in theory, but I have yet to see it really make games better, not just shinier or more reflective or detailed. All the details in an RT scene does not equal a better gaming experience, just better eye candy.

I want games with realistic gameplay, the graphics are just art style choices. _Edit: still can't notice the difference between the look of a good developed maxed out Raster game, and a slightly better Ray Traced shadows + reflections one._

I belive the DOF in cyberpunk ist implemented with reshade ist not acurate i recomend you too probe the DOF of the Mods Natural and Realistic in Watch dos 1 ist most relistic an well implemneted.

that's some diegetic non-diegetic paint if I've ever seen some

I'd even say, that Graphics aren't that important for the majority of people. Yes, it's nice and all of that, but I noticed, if you play a game you get used to it really fast. For example, I played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, I was leaving the Interior for the first time (which looked really horrible), I got in the outta world. It looked great, I was flashed af, but after like 10 Minutes, I didn't even care anymore, I got used to it. The same is for Witcher 1, I played it, and the graphics are really outdated and after 10-20 Minutes, I got used to it, and it didn't bother me. The only exception I had so far, was on Assassin's Creed 2. The game is old, yes, but playing it normal, it was okayish, got used to it, but the cutscenes looked really horrible, but it was because I didn't see them permanently. I think, this is the same for many other people, the Nintendo Consoles show, that people get used to okayish graphics.

"I have never thought to myself that realism is fun, I go play games to have fun." - Gabe Newell

Even with those mods i wouldn't say it looks real life. Its more realistic but still looks kinda different.

Mostly its just massive amounts of depth of field. I always turn of depth of field in all my games, my own eyes already have the depth of field effect

The yellow paint thing is whatever really. Sure it can be distracting but it's not stopping you from exploring the other direction first. But also, you mention it's either not knowing where to go OR having yellow paint, I don't agree with that. You can have good level design and clear environments without yellow paint, while also having tons of detail in the environments.

Natural looking environments like that from Alan Wake 2 suck. Game developers following the trend of adding more and more detail to games are forgetting a very important requirement that is making game environments "readable" so players can tell what is what at first glance, which is why we end having so much immersion breaking out of place yellow paint. Realism not only doesn't make games better most of the time, but I'm convinced that most people trying to make things "realistic" don't even understand what that word really means. Every time I hear someone say that real life colors aren't as vibrant or "contrasty" I just assume that they don't go outside often or they live in a big city and are surrounded by nothing but concrete walls. I do live in a city but if I look outside my window right now I see a lot more color than in that Cyberpunk mod which just traded the piss filter from the old days for a low contrast filter. I'm about to go outside for a run in a real life environment with colors closer to vanilla Cyberpunk (or many other games without reshade) than modded Cyberpunk or many "realism" mods I've seen.

Regarding enemy AI (rather than graphics/visuals), countless people have pointed out that a completely realistic stealth game or war game would NOT be fun at all. If a stealth game like Metal Gear Solid had enemies with intelligence, vision, and hearing as accurate to real-life as possible, nobody would want to play the game. It would be infuriatingly frustrating and tedious. Even gamers who love a seemingly-impossible challenge would be like "Fuck this bullshit."

Its because we don’t want to spend 10,000 dollars.