One thing is clear - consoles should definitely evolve. We're limited thanks to them now. Not so much how things look but how much you can explore. Almost every multiplatform game is a corridor today because consoles can't handle a bigger area.

As for graphics in general, an evolution is natural. As long as developers provide changeable settings, I don't see any problem. There is almost a room for improvements and it's up to developers/publishers to consider costs vs. expenses.

Lifelike is not necessarily what I look for.

Yay for cell-shaded !

I do not think corridor-gameplay comes from the incapacity to handle bigger areas.

I think that we've more or less hit a plateau with how realistic graphics can look on a screen, so I think the next big step is not in quality, but in immersion. For instance, I would love to see a game system that incorporates head tracking, such as in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

Graphical power and art design are related. That's why BF3 and TW2 stand out. It's not just the technical aspect, which is why this argument has always seemed to me like asking artists to lower their game. It's not going to happen, and it shouldn't.

Again, look at Skyrim, made with an insanely high budget, and then look at TW2 which was around 11 million USD.

I'll think about it :-) But rather on console, because my laptop sucks :(

I've looked at screenshots, and yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Game designers can do everything their imaginations show them, so I freaking expect something original, other than another gray-ass shooter.

More graphics improvements please. Polygons that are invisible with a mono display are easy to see with a stereoscopic one. Grass and other foliage always look terrible.

So did you check the Crysis 3 trailers and tech demos yet, how do you feel they measure up to the games you mentioned? The plants certainly look very good in Crysis 3, but I am unsure how much they will matter when you play.

I'm now replaying Far Cry, and while the graphics look old and fake by today's standards, I still like how lush they look, and I'm still impressed by many of the scenes. I feel the graphics are quite adequate for the game. But I still recognize later games like Crysis 1-2 and Far Cry 3 look even better.

It is hard to say if this is now as good as it needs to get. It depends how much more eye candy are they able to provide with what kind of horse power. I usually switch off e.g. edge antialiasing (16x MSAA or whatever) by default, as to me it seems to provide quite minor visual enhancements compared to the hit on performance, at least when playing on high resolutions like 1920x1080.

As some other discussion on this suggested, not all games need to try to be ultra-realistic looking, but stylistic, like XIII or Borderlands. Maybe many games are missing the point when they try to look realistic instead of stylistic. A bit like if cartoons always tried to look as realistic as possible.

Ugh, I really hate crappy looking grass sprites...

I say no. The rasterization process from a 3D scene to a 2D plane can always benefit from both performance and fidelity improvements, i.e. be it in the traditional graphical pipeline or with something like ray tracing. Just think how much better looking games or other interactive media would present itself if we could apply pre-filtering anti-aliasing methods (or something with the same quality).
The same goes for stuff like true light/shadow physics, instead of having to use illumination models that just approximate light values.

I'd be surprised if my computer could run Metro 2033 even at the lowest settings. :p
Still surprised it managed Twitcher2, must have been at the absolute minimum !

Further improvement in graphics will blow budgets. Devs know that, players know that. The majority of paying consumers don't care that much, so only 10 geeks will cry without dx12.

I don't mind graphical improvements, but I would prefer the industry as a whole to move away from photo-realism as the goal, and instead focus on making games that are aesthetically pleasing. Games like Wind Waker, Tron 2.0, Sly Cooper, Aquaria, La-Mulana, and other games that use a stylized approach. A shade of brown is still brown, no matter the horsepower behind it.

In my opinion, DOOM is one example of a game that uses a lot of brown that still looks interesting. I think a big part of it is the level design, which takes many more liberties than modern FPS games because DOOM's levels do not attempt to replicate reality. The architecture of DOOM simply doesn't obey the design principles of our real-world buildings and locations, which modern games try to imitate painstakingly. This really hurts modern games, because the levels are not designed for gameplay, but to be realistic - which translates to not being fun. The uneven architecture of the levels means that the game is visually varied when the player explores the maps, which helps makes the game visually distinct.

I'm not a gfx whore, I do like games to look nice, but I dont care if I'm playing Arcanum or Far Cry as long as the game is good.

I'm currently playing Wizardry 8 and I find the gfx astonishing at times, when you consider the detail and physics in that game come from 2001 era,

My most recent games, Far Cry 3, Darksiders 2, DMC, all have incredible gfx, I certainly dont need anything better, if it could reduce the cost of games in any way, I would prefer a standard was reached and maintained for a decent time period.

Sure, when I bought my PC I asked (same as many others) can it run Crysis, but that wasnt a desire for a better gfx experience (for me anyway) as I tend to play older games, but it was a way of future proofing my purchase, to make sure it would be servicable for a decent period.

You too go and play Darksiders II.