system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
Let's face  it. 

There  isn't much  room  left for fotorealistic improval (at least  until I.A. can start generating realistic 3d models and textures) 


For humans creating textures is a ton of work. Every  model needs to be created and textured for hoursandhours.  
If you  don't have a triple A budget the game won't put a  dent  in an up to date gpu. 

And there is no need to.  Graphics look great since a decade.  Many  games  start  putting design on top  of the agenda not  realism. 

Who  needs another bland  game like that  when you can have  emersive, creative and beautiful games like hollowknight, sea od thieves,  undertale, portal, ori and the blind forest,ect.

It's nice to have  the opportunity to create realistic graphics if needed by the artists but  design is the future of this  artform  not  pure  realism.
gpt
Gotta be honest, Sea of Thieves has some real charm to it. Graphically it is amazing, but yet it is just so well optimised you could run it on 10 year old Low End Hardware and still have playable FPS. And, when you got 4 friends, on a ship all playing musical instruments while a Kraken is taking down your ship. Just makes me smile

Also, another point on realism. L.A Noir, sometimes it isn't worth the sacrifice for realistic graphics. I mean you look at Rock stars later games they 100% learnt that lesson. Creating beautiful yet well optimised games, a great Example would be Max Payne 3. Looking like a modern triple A game from 3/4 years ago. Yet even running on my 8 year old iGPU with above and or around 30 FPS.