9 minutes ago, Chris Schmidt said:

Right, but does not more physical detail, movement, lighting, etc. then become more resource-intensive and place greater demand upon hardware that most consumers don't have?

It's true that in 2006 that model gave the best graphics card a run for it's money, and today you could render 10 of them in game at the same time on a mid-range card. However it was not the same as witnessing Doom3's lighting for the first time. Doom3's lighting looked like nothing you've ever seen in real time before.

11 minutes ago, Chris Schmidt said:

It does look good, but I can't agree that most games don't look like that today — to my eyes, most games look just like that or better. She definitely still looks plastic, and "doll-like" to me. 

 

Do most games look like the GIF you posted? I'd argue that most games wouldn't put in the time to create that face artistically. On the other hand, I don't think the original quake had a lot of "art" in it. It was more about optimising rendering techniques which were not seen in real time before.

I'm not against artwork or anything like that ? .  It's just that as a programmer with a life long infatuation with graphics, I don't as excited by this tech anymore. Maybe I'm just old, but then again I don't remember any game marketing heavily on it's engine. Maybe "No Man's Sky", but their engine's uniqueness didn't lay in it's graphics )

1 hour ago, SillyCow said:

Do most games look like the GIF you posted? I'd argue that most games wouldn't put in the time to create that face artistically.

I would definitely say that most major studios' games look comparable, yes.

Your question is making me wonder that you have more respect for arcade games!! I feel that I need a balance of good graphics, a decent story line and so on.A combo is always best!!

5 hours ago, haanuman said:

Your question is making me wonder that you have more respect for arcade games!! I feel that I need a balance of good graphics, a decent story line and so on.A combo is always best!!

Yes, a good balance should be respected! All aspects support eachother and nothing should be bottlenecked because of the other. By that I mean graphics should be good but not too much to hinder or kill gameplay and gameplay should respect graphics and not be so damn messy, unless thats the driving point of the game. 

I prefer dinamic progress through the game, smooth event sequencing, and a minor challenge with puzzle implementation (not literally, could be a few events scattered through the map i have to assemble into one).

And i see that AAA games don't like to experiment with much of the interesting ideas in game development, they go for a sure release with sure event flow through the game, even if it means that the content is loopy, and looks like the game is made repetetive. Outside of a little rant, i prefer the second option - not neccessarily arcade, but depth and innovation, even if it means going out of the box and confusion, i really love putting things into perspective, finding out what the devs wanted to tell, the hidden story behind the game etc.