Realistic or Cartoony?

"Beardedgeek;c-17918666" wrote:
It depends on how Realistic your Realistic is.
Skyrim is getting old, but not as old as FO3 or NV. But somewhere there is a line where realism ages "better". Of course it is easier in games without humans like racing games; Forza Horizon 3 still looks awesome, but it is easier to make detailed renders of dead objects like cars, obviously.

The BIG key except for old blocky "realistic" graphics is the Uncanny Valley. Skyrim and FO3 and 4 all avoids that, while Oblivion (and Sims 3) definitely has it.
Assassins Creed and Mass Effect definitely avoids it.

That said it is still easier to make a well defined cartoony art style stay "good looking" over the years; Skyrim looks good for being so old, it doesn't actually look good while Sims 4 still look ❤️❤️❤️❤️ fantastic exactly because the art style is exactly that: stylized and on point. It's the same reason why heavily stylized animated movies like say Frozen or Big Hero 6 looks so much better than Monster University, because although MU had "photo realistic backgrounds" (room renders etc) the actual animation was pretty bad.
And of course why hand drawn cartoons never get old.

I guess what I've driving at though is, at a certain point (if the tech is able to keep up, I'm not sure how much of a given that actually is) new games are going to be so close to photo realism, it's virtually impossible for them to "age poorly." And it seems to me we may already be at that point now, considering the Unreal Engine MetaHuman Creator I've been seeing stuff about. So we may reach a point (if we aren't already there now) where the idea of how a game's graphics ages is just not a noteworthy factor and then it will come down entirely to preference.

Also, personally, I don't think Sims 4's graphics look fantastic, which ties into my preference for photo realism style where possible. I don't mean that as a diss to TS4's artists (I think they do a great job with the style they are trying to do), but it's not to my preference, so for me, a game like TS4 ages poorly in its own way because it could be looking more realistic than it was when it came out with mods and it instead will forever be limited to the cartoon style.

Anyway, not trying to single you out for saying this stuff, nothing personal at all, just some thoughts that popped into my head about the subject and the general discussion of graphics aging and whether and how they do.

But yeah, I do see what you're saying about uncanny valley. That is an interesting way to distinguish to what extent it makes the biggest difference.