>>715636784
It's more of an artistic direction failure. Games have started using really advanced simulations of atmospheric lighting conditions. Where in 2002 you basically just threw some cloud textures on a dome and had a global directional light and that was it, now there are hundreds of variables to tweak that all effect the way every textures looks in game. It means developers really have no idea what their rock / grass / tree textures will look like in the final product because they are exposed to dozens of lighting situations... so they opt for realistic and sort of washed out colors. The vivid green of grass in full sun would look weird if it was the base color and you had a foggy rainy setting, so everything is more neutral to look good in various lighting /weather conditions.
All of this was the cost of getting real time lighting in big worlds so that we could have realistic day / night cycles.
Interestingly, games like Genshin Impact literally vertex paint their lighting and have them click on and off at various times of day, so they sacrifice realism for better control of the lighting setup.
