Emotional responses don't form from AAA graphics, they come from the characters, world, and dorky parts of the game/s you love. So if you're an artist or small studio, leaning more into the cringe, the style, and the direction, rather than conforming to popular UI and workload trends might just be fantastic in every aspect of production?
The battle of getting artists to go home at reasonable hours to see their loved ones at large studios is real, so it’s up to the smaller studios to lead by example and free talent. Or maybe the big dogs can change?????
when i say 'i want worse graphics', some ppl assume i mean 'i want stylyzed instead of realistic' then get mad at me for saying it wrong (???) so let me be clear:
i want worse graphics. i want the models topology to be a bit off, i want the rigging to have a few verts mis-weighted, i want the final model to not be accurate to the concept art cuz it would have been too labor intensive to make the scarf that long. i want the shading to do the thing where a real time character shadow is casting on top of another baked in shadow. i want whatever eases the devs workload and prevents crunch so they can go home to their loved ones and actually enjoy their life outside of work