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.
RDR2 is fucking beautiful, GTA4 looked great at the time, and GTA5 probably looks the worst of each respective time/release but it came out at the end of the 360 era so couldn’t be as graphically groundbreaking as their other games while growing the complexity of the world. But it still looks great, even today.
The characters in GTA5 and RDR2 saw a massive upgrade, everyone looks hyper realistic. Holy crap I want to play RDR2 again, so gorgeous.
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