And neither do yours. Good thing this is a public forum where we're free to share our non-universally agreed upon opinions.
That's completely missing the point. You asked what the point in graphical technology is if it doesn't result in pleasing aesthetics, but it's a faulty premise, because it's not a fact.
To use a Nintendo example, I actually think SMW, and especially Yoshi's Island, both look massively better than NSMBU. That's an example of hugely superior hardware, and development tools, resulting in a far less appealing aesthetic for me. There are good reasons for this, Nintendo moved from rasters to vectors, and for whatever reason, when I see them, I have different emotional responses to them, one I enjoy, the other I don't. But the important thing is that this was a choice, not a hardware implication. Nintendo didn't have to change, they choose to. Better technology was never a limiting factor.
Now when attempting to make a game that evokes reality, I have never had a similar experience. I don't see PS1's swimming textures or N64's blurry textures as more evocative, or charming or whatever.
So, for Bloodborne...
Put simply, this:
Is just hugely more evocative than this is:
And when DemonBorne or whatever comes to PS5, it's going to be much better still.
When striving for realism, graphics technology hugely improves the aesthetic I think. Maybe we start really seeing diminishing returns in the next twenty years, but until we somehow achieve infinite local compute processing, there will always be compromises to make, and developers that want realistic visuals are always going to favor graphics over performance.
