> Actually it feels like the trend you are starting to see is that AAA studios can't even keep up (aka Mass Effect Andromeda, and other recent high profile releases). The graphics burden just seems too high that everything else suffers.
The problem with Andromeda was animations, not AAA graphical fidelity. I don't think many people are unhappy with the current level of flashy effects, we're mostly just looking at higher resolution assets (which likely exist already).
Animations are a big part of graphical fidelity. Games with lower-detail character models relied more on your mind to fill in the details as characters spoke or made facial expressions (I still remember an incredible scene in 2001's Anachronox where a character slowly smiles, conveyed with the motion of three vertices), but when you have a near-photorealistic rendering of a human face, the animation has to be up to standard. This is every bit a drain on art budgets as the modeling and textures.
Wouldn't then be desirable to avoid showing human faces up close and, instead, explore other ways of telling stories that better match both budget and technical resources?
Insisting on showing a character in great detail when the costs of doing so far outweigh the benefit is unwise.
The problem with Andromeda was animations, not AAA graphical fidelity. I don't think many people are unhappy with the current level of flashy effects, we're mostly just looking at higher resolution assets (which likely exist already).