: I don't know how you can go from "Photorealistic graphics take
: development time and resources from other aspects of a game and often
: aren't worth the investment" to "Let's get rid of lighting
: effects and environmental animation," but you managed it. Somehow.

If more complex graphics are often not worth it then the assumed solution would be to scale the graphics back or remove them in favor of more time spent on gameplay or story or whatever. In my post I was trying to demonstrate that sometimes the investment in graphics IS worth it.

: What if it was heroically stylized, like the WarCraft and, to a lesser extent, StarCraft games?

I don't know. Alan Wake had a lot of realistic themes and characters. Might it have worked with the cartoony Blizzard graphics? Possibly. Would that have been the best fit? Better than what it had? In my opinion: No. Absolutely not.

:Sometimes, I wonder if Mass Effect would have been better if it was as stylized as some of
:the early concept art. There's a lot of times where the more photorealistic route they
:took falls flat because they didn't have enough animation to back it up.

Yeah, Mass Effect, especially the first one, was really pushing the envelope of what was possible and often pushed too far. The passing an object animations were hilarious in their awkwardness! :)

I wonder if it would have been better served with stylized static conversations vs animated 3D models. Something like full screen comic panes representing the two sides of a conversation that swapped in and out as the dialogue moved forward. Then, make the rest of the game's graphics stylized to match that... or something.