Again this is about DF best looking games not games using the most advanced feature set, if it was about the games with most advanced graphics features they would have actually named games like witcher 3 and doom arent on the list and do you know why it's because they look like mud. botw runs on hardware objectly  weaker then the 360 yet you named it as the most impressive open world game just a few posts ago, when we know witcher 3 is way more advanced so you are allowed to do it but i'm not?

So are lighting and shadows on PC ultra settings higher resolution than consoles? Since I moved to PC I have been blown away by the improvement on PC. Lighting and shadows look like a gen leap.

It never got better than BoTW. Perhaps MH Rise but that has some awful textures. Fire Emblem 3 houses and Astral chain are up there. 

Its own sequel improved on it with superior draw distance and sharper image quality.

BotW is a beautiful game, just not very consistent with it. There are areas like the north cliff of Death Mountain or the Gerudo Highlands that feel flat textured and boring to me.
From the games I own I think Link's Awakening Remake is the most visually pleasing.

The title of the video is "best graphics" so it's really about whatever semantic definition DF gives that phrase. And they didn't explicitly state what that phrase means to them in this video, but given their catalog of work my personal understanding of their view is that they appreciate and analyze how various techniques are applied towards an end result, considering the hardware it's running on. It's not one or the other between technical make-up and end-result of the aesthetics for them. It's about the ingenuity and implementation of said techniques towards a final goal that each individual project is trying to achieve. That's why they can have proper discussion and analysis of games on older or less powerful hardware and still appreciate the outcomes. 

As for why they didn't name games like Witcher 3 and Doom... Well again I'll point to the title. It literally says "First Party Exclusive Selection". Doom and Witcher 3 aren't first-party or exclusives. And they reiterate that at 1:08 in the video. They make exceptions to their own rules with Fast RMX and The Touryst, but that's because they aren't robots. John has touted his admiration of that (non-first party) studio for the decade he's been there and is always open to highlighting their works. The studio also has a long-standing closeness to Nintendo hardware with Fast RMX being an expanded port of a Wii U exclusive, The Touryst debuting on Switch before coming to other platforms, and most of the studio's output being exclusive to Nintendo platforms.

In a simplified way of speaking, yes. The higher quality settings are usually just higher "sample rates" (you can think of this as resolution) versions of the same effect. They can also be completely different techniques/ways of doing the same kind of effect but requiring much more processing power. That's what "optimization" is. It's about setting the right "resolution" for the different effects and/or finding the right technique to do the same thing but with less processing power, usually at a reduced quality of end result but weighing the performance cost to quality. For example, there are many ways to blur a frame/image, or apply "depth of field" to it. Typically the "better" techniques (those that better resemble how a camera or eyeball works) require more processing power. But you can get away with a cheaper technique if it's used the right way or during the right moments in a game (like maybe only using depth-of-field during cutscenes when action is more controlled, the framerate is lower, or the CPU is freed from processing game logic).

Luigi's Mansion 3 to this day is my favorite game in terms of graphics/visuals.

Whatever they did , was amazing.

The lighting, animations, shadows, reflections, etc

Perfect game for the Halloween season too.

Nah, the textures on ToTK are atrocious at times. BoTW is nicer looking.

Agreed.  I can't wait to see LM4 on the switch 2.  It will be something else.  

Huh ... Show us an example of what you speak of cuz they're both similar games, that sure ain't what I saw.