I'm trying to figure out whether you think that because, as you say, "this game is lit with the purpose of accentuating certain features of the landscape and to create a very distinctive image,"
if you are saying that like it's a bad thing...?
It's a cinema style experience.
Straight, "real life" lighting usually SUCKS. You wouldn't really want that in a action-packed game. The lighting would be really boring, and the impact on the look of the overall product would be to make it look like a really low-rent, B-movie that couldn't afford good production. Photographers, assistants, DPs, cinematographers, grips, ect. all make their livings based on the fact that real life needs a lot of
help to look good on camera. I wouldn't have a job if real life looked great!
I like this style, personally. Very cinematic. Using the artistic tools that cinema and other arts have used for decades to pull emotional impact out of a scene is a good thing. Better than just trying to match a reference image pixel for pixel with your technology.
