>game visuals peaked on under-powered 20 year old hardware
>they only regressed since despite newer tech, bigger budgets, more dev time etc

It'd be funny if it weren't so sad

I genuinely believe this is where game graphics should've stopped

Thinking you can make games look or play better than this by individually rendering every blade of grass is like thinking you can improve a book or a comic by using real life photos instead of artist illustrations (or nothing in the case of a non-illustrated book), every medium except vidya seems to understand there's a goldilocks zone when it comes to visuals

All we got from increased graphics is worse gameplay, bloated devtimes, and huge budgets that mean less risk