>>7491676Take this
>>7488514 shot for instance.
EVERYTHING in this shot is man-made. There aren't any rocks, plants, animals, people, etc. (i.e. organic objects) to throw off our incredible senses to detect fakery. Everything (except for the cloth hanging at the top-center) is hard-surface. Other than that, it's all sterile, clean, right angles, etc. You can do an ambient occlusion pass and bake that into your textures for a really soft look which adds realism. You can see that being done on the orange thing in the middle (wtf is that anyways). Also consider that this look really doesn't lend itself to a lot of different genres. Mostly first person adventures and shooters.
But if we critique this shot, it's really not THAT great. Look at the jaggy shadows on the left column. And the glass looks smokey. Also, the scale seems really weird to me. Look at the size of the clock and the doors. I feel like these doors are really tiny, but maybe it's just perspective.
And the better-looking the screenshot, the more likely it's cherry picked. I've played this game, and it had a lot of ugly areas.
