We know GTA6, if nothing else is going to be the best looking game like no other and now that Naughty Dog doesn't seem to be going balls to the wall with Intergalactic and are taking a more measured approach it looks like GTA6 won't be beat for some time. RDR2 still looks ahead of most new AAA releases on a generation old console much like TLOU2's re-releases do, hell the OG game itself. Naughty Dog and the RDR2 team are just unmatched. 

There's a good chance that GTA6 may be the height of graphics for a vanilla, unmodded game we see perhaps for ever or at least a long, long while. I predict that even Sony will reach their peak this gen and plateau or even scale back like MS has done albeit not to the degree they have and Nintendo shows no sign of competing for graphics ever again. 

Thoughts on the matter?

Nah, so far it doesn't even look better than some games that are out now like Avatar Frontiers of Pandora or Hellblade II.

RDR2 was surpassed even by some later PS4 games like TLOU2 and Ghost of Tsushima, and left well behind by many current gen releases technically.

I don't agree, but I don't get the hype for Hellblade 2 anyway cause that's just a load of post processing trickery and desaturated to avhive its look and yes for RDR2 technically is the correct word but it still looks better than many releases today, 7 years on. Put RDR2 on PS4 PRO/PS5 side by side with stuff like Black Myth WuKong or FF16 and it looks better. Do you believe Naughty Dog will have a TLOU2 type deal with Intergalactic, cause them and Santa Monica are all I can think that will give them competition. Yeah, Yotei will look better on an artistic level. 

Also, TLOU2 also uses a lott of PP like film grain and stuff to achieve that look, I do think it looks on par but it's not an open world title like RDR2. Horizon FW burning shores, now that is a game above HB and TLOU2 that I can say is the height of graphics. 

RDR2 is a generation behind the likes of Wukong technologically; it appears to "holds up" due to art direction and attention to detail, in terms of tech it's tethered to the limitations of 2013 console technology.

Assuming it has path tracing on PC it will be top class for a while but it'll of course get surpassed within a few years since graphics are still improving. GTA 6 won't be photorealistic and that's something that should be seen in the 2030's.

Yeah but the pace at which graphics are progressing is slowing to a crawl, hell much is regressing because of image quality issues along with things like pop in, texture pop in, ailising and what not returning. 

It's slowed down for sure but not to a crawl yet. The visuals of something like Hellblade 2 destroy anything before this decade.

Noo, but graphics become boring fast anyway without any interaction with its world.

From a pure fidelity standpoint absolutely not; there were already better looking games out before it was even revealed.

From a technical standpoint though it's sure to become the new benchmark. Dense geometry, huge draw distances, hundreds of intelligent npc's at once, industry leading physics, thousands of little details you could only find from a project of its singular scope, it's sure to be a real treat. I look forward to taking my time and just soaking it all in.

The next gen port will be...and could be out soon.. I just want it to be a fast experience, GTA V always felt so sluggish to me but I was fine with it because it had to work on a console from 2005 something people tend to forget..