Off the top of my head I can’t remember who it was, but almost a decade ago I read an interview with a fairly famous designer who was talking about how greater processing power was showing how unrealistic their games were; and that at every stage it required more work to try to compensate for the newly apparent shortcomings. This was fairly early in the last generation and the two examples he used was how sterile and empty most environments seemed (and how you now needed to devote resources towards creating content no one would pay attention to because its absence would be noticeable) and how rare and static NPCs seemed (and how you needed to create more NPCs which performed activities that no one would pay attention to but their absence would be noticeable).
There are other elements in that the higher quality the graphics the more likely people are to notice repetition; and you now are forced to create variations of objects people won’t pay attention to because their absence will be noticed.
The only thing I find really (REALLY) silly about this, is that there is all this emphasis on realism in games where an individual can get shot dozens of times and instantly heal using a med-kit; or for a racing game where you can fly 200 MPH into a wall and both you and your car are perfectly fine.
