Of course, it's a balancing act. Thats why I excused the character models and other inconsistencies in shadows and level of detail back in 2020 when I rated it higher than cyberpunk for best graphics in 2020. I also consistently rate it higher than GOW 2018, HZD and Death Stranding. Because overall, I agreed that the compromises made were for the right reasons.
That said, its been 3 years, and we are now getting a next gen remaster. We just got a full blown next gen only remake where they did have the extra horsepower and did nothing with it to improve the character models. Again, all i wanted them to do was match the original gameplay trailer which did have great character model LODs for both Ellie and enemy NPCs. We didnt get it with TLOU1 and dont seem to be getting it now. They have no excuse today.
This is what she looked like during gameplay at the E3 2018 trailer.
This is the final game. Why not update this to have the hero lighting that was clearly being faked in the E3 2018 trailer with way higher fidelity character models?
Same. I had hoped that we would see some of that tech in the TLOU remake a la the Spiderman remaster which was a test bench of sorts, but maybe by the time they took over the project from VSG it was too late.
And yes, their cutscenes are a league ahead of every else aside from kojiPro which had insane character models in cutscenes especially Diehardman and Mads in the final few cutscenes. However, I didnt feel the same jarring transitions for Death Stranding like I did with TLOU2 and especially TLOU1 which has some of the best cutscene graphics ive ever seen. I swear they felt like they were done by a different team. they look better than anything ive seen this gen.