KyoZz
Tag, you're it.
That's not true, look at Far Cry 2 which still looks pretty during the day but horrible at night because the textures have no depth.
A texture is nothing without proper lighting. It will just look flat.
You can mod better textures (AI is doing an awesome job at it btw) but you can't upgrade the lighting.
Control, Red Dead II, Plague Tales, Dead Space Remake etc... are all looking amazing but if you look into the textures you will be surprised. What's striking in those games IS the lighting.
Dishonored II is another great example, a game from 2016 which still looks great thanks to its lighting, but if you look at the texture work it's very minimalist.
A game with amazing lighting will holp up far better than a game with flat lighting but great textures. And honestly that's not an opinion. As I was searching for older games to gives examples, I found this topic:
Textures VS Geometry VS Lighting. What's the most important?
If you think about it, the major ingredients that make up the graphics/visuals in a 3D game is basically those things. First you need polygons, then you need to dress them up with textures and then you need a lighting system to see what's going on. Which one of those three things you think is...
I'd say art style is also a bigger factor than textures.
