I kind of stopped caring about how good a game's graphics were once we reached Halo 3's graphics.

Artistic visual style is where it's at.

I kind of stopped caring about how good a game's graphics were once we reached Halo 3's graphics.

Artistic visual style is where it's at.

Ye. Halo 5 might be more advanced in terms of shaders, polygons, and texture sizes, but Halo 3 and Reach look much better.

I haven't played video games in over a year

I think that's a good thing.

Rather than trying to break the boundaries and technical limitations of the previous generation of console and PC hardware, we're starting to focus on either immersion, compelling stories, and other aspects of games that are arguably more important.

We've already hit the stage of realistic/"hyper-realistic" graphics with more polygons and shaders/ENB's than you can shake a stick at, so stuff like VR and integration into a game (like those omni movement thingies):

are making a successful comeback from the shit in the early 90's.

I can't say stories have gotten better yet as most recent stuff I haven't had time to play (or I haven't had interest in it, contrary to what Verb has for Breathe of the Wild), but it seems more likely as graphics will be far less of a selling point than it has been for every previous generation of consoles, as well as the console vs PC memes that pop out every so often.

No longer will it be "but you can see the aliasing!" or "Man this shooter sucks, the gun barrel is just a dodecagon" but "The protagonist has no depth", "This game is just a fairground ride that you can't get off", "why did that happen? That deviates from canon/lore/whatever".

I was actually more impressed by Mario Kart 8/Smash 4's visuals than I was by Halo 5.

But yeah I stopped really caring about having impressive graphics years ago. Halo 4's graphics and lighting engine was way more complex at the time and I still think Reach looks miles better.

I can appreciate a particularly advanced looking game like SWBF or Uncharted, but I just think all the bungie.net fags who use console processing power as the whole basis of their argument when deciding on a console to be fucking stupid and missing the point of gaming entirely.

As far as judging a game's quality, I agree.
But it still is very impressive to see how games push technical limitations and make advancements on things like water physics, real time reflections, etc...  And it's even better when those effects actually have an impact on the gameplay.

I dunno, sometimes it feels like PS3 and PS4 games may as well just be the same until I start looking into the little things like water particles or whatever

Some games are pretty stark contrasts. Uncharted 2 and 3 are some of the only exceptions.

We need to go back to Space Invaders' graphical level.