When I was a youngling, graphics improved quickly and that made older games look worse by every year. What initially looked amazing and “life-like” turned dated in just a couple of years, however it seems graphics has plateaued in the last ten-ish years.
I would say that we reached the point of diminishing returns around next-gen GTA V / MGS V. Not that you can’t see the difference between those and modern games, but it’s nowhere the leap from San Andreas to GTA IV.
I recently started playing MGS V again and I’m shocked at how good it still looks, compare it to RDD 2 and you would probably need a side by side comparison to see the extra detail.
We have finally reached a point where old games dont get less immersive because our baseline in visual fidelity keeps increasing, or if it does it’s atleast a lot slower.
I think the most interesting example is Red Dead Redemption 2. I don’t like its gameplay, but…
It still looks better than most recent AAA games, mainly due to art direction and attention to detail.
But I disagree that graphical improvements made older games look worse. Most PS2 games looked bad from the beginning because they used mostly shades of grey and brown trying to look realistic.
Games that were designed with the graphical limitations in mind still look great today, for example The Wind Waker and Kingdom Hearts.