Oh, I get it. I still think it is not a good example. Creating more unique boss fight means more work for everyone, not just staff in charge of certain aspects of the game.

FF X was also linear. Limitation is gaming always existed, either by budget or hardware constraints. Original Final Fantasy last 20 hours of gameay at best, FF XIII takes at least 50 to beat and likely the double of that to play everything the game has to offer

It was not only the graphics, but the game length too. This is not a consequence of graphics getting better, but from big developers trying to stand out in a competitive market.

Remember in the 90s the games teams were small and companies couldn't afford long development cycles, first because it was pointless as most of machine couldn't handle big games regardless. It started to change around PS times

During the 5th generation the hardware started to get powerful enough to justify bigger games and of course the richer developers started to hire bigger teams and give them more time to develop bigger games, as most of games were priced the same the bigger games could, potentially, provide more fun because they would last longer 

There was an very easy solution to solve this, attach gaming price to its length, but nobody seemed to care because for many the amount of fun you get playing (which is subjective) is more important than how much content the game has. Indeed if you have more fun replaying a 5-hours game 10 times than playing a 50-hours game one time, then you purchase was meaningful. But I'm starting to digress from my point 

Back to the point, when you have your competitor making a 20-hour game, what you do next is make a 25-hour game, then your competitor will make a 30-hour game and then it goes. This of course does not affect only the story, people now wants bigger maps with as many assets as possible, more enemies variety, customization and all that needs more and more time to be made. The number of bugs increase exponentially to how much freedom interaction is allowed, making the gaming development for bigger titles a hell. BOTW 2 is going to have 2008-level of graphics and will need 6 years to be release due to how hard it handle open world games levels in game of that scale. 

You can argue most of resources are going to artists, which is true, but they are not the reason for the crappy gameplay. You can't triple the size of the core gameplay team and expect the gameplay to get any better, it won't.

The only thing that will happen if you start to make weak graphics is that you could potentially make games faster, which is true. But are arts teams really the bottleneck of modern gaming development? Or is it the level design teams and gameplay teams which now have much bigger challenges to handle with maps that have dozens of characters moving in complex tridimensional spaces ?

Just for reflecting because I doubt ignoring graphics at this point will make games better.

What a big post damn

TLDR version:

- Graphics are not the reason for crappy gameplay
- To make better graphics you need more people and time (and good hardware to run them)
- To make a better gameplay more people and time might not be enough
- Unless you game has very little gameplay, something like Detroit become human, graphics and art may not be the bottleneck in the development
- Resources being allocated in arts aren't the reason for gameplay becoming worse, because throw money in development team is not enough to design better levels and maps

Graphics will always improve. We hear that same logic every new gen, then the next gen comes out and blows everyone away. There is alot more to realism that this gen cant do.

We have seen a huge hint of the next step. That Matrix demo. The next step is seeing that demo run at 60fps - 120fps.

There are always huge steps the industry can take.

So, like Ultima games from 2 to 3 decades ago?

Ray Tracing says otherwise. Sure many are not trying to implement it just yet since it's so new, but many will focus on it eventually.

It's not just resolution anymore either, it's also fluidity. We've only just reached 60fps becoming the new norm, though not steady locked 60 just yet.

There's plenty of room to improve visual fidelity, but I would say in the next gen or two, we should be at the point where more and more devs will say good enough, assuming there's not a huge audience wanting to pay for that by that point.

Maybe everything will go Netflix and most devs won't have a choice but to hold back on the graphics. God help us.

No.

You never played those Ultima games. 

Actually I have.  My stance stays at "no."  

And aren't you are on the record as having only played 2 hours of BotW??  Assuming that is accurate, seems odd you are questioning what I have played.