I know I’ll get downvoted to hell for this even though I’m literally posting the kind of stuff Unpopular Opinion is here for, but so be it.
I can’t even make out the faces most of the time in BotW. Just look at the screenshots for yourself. And it always bugged me just how featureless and uninteresting Link’s face looked, especially his eyes. Compare it to literally any other Link’s face (in-game for 3D, artwork for 2D).
In contrast, Pokémon XY had really good cel-shading for the Pokémon during battles. I was honestly impressed that a 3DS could have such a high polygon count and such clean, clear cel-shading lines and colors during its battles. For some odd reason, I have not seen such clean cel-shading before or since.
I would also like to say that Skyward Sword on the Wii had a much cleaner, more detailed, more beautiful look than Breath of the Wild did, and I will die with those words.
It just goes to show you that there is simply no replacement for good art direction— raw power and long draw distance aren’t enough.
Yee. I imagine if the Wii U didn’t flop, they would have had more time to work on their engine so that they could still render long-draw-distance viewscapes beautifully, while also not making everything so blurry and undefined. What they did with Skyward Sword was astounding for the Wii, and a lot of modern games don’t even look that pretty. Just because Nintendo had good artistic direction for that game.