>>46410233Absolutely, they look better because they have a combination of better textures (subtle amounts of noise on the surface of objects), they have proper ambient occlusion making each form and detail where things overlap stand out, they have proper overall value structures by having deep enough shadows, etc.
They may be pure 3d renders, or 3d renders with some slight photoshopping instead of messing with complex materials to get a nicer render (easier/lower effort, basically same result). Obviously games meant to run in real time don't render the same way 3d modeling software makes renders like that, however you can "bake" a lot of this detail into the textures on objects, or get very similar results with the proper in-game materials and lighting. There's no fucking excuse from gamefreak or ilca, besides sheer laziness or incompetency.
Stuff like ambient occlusion can be done in engine (more hardware intensive), but in most games like this it's just baked onto the textures.
Not every game or style NEEDS ambient occlusion either, so that's where the discussion of style actually begins to enter the conversation, but we can safely ignore that because the graphics of this game are actually just that bad.
