"It's expensive and it doesn't age": Why Ken Levine didn't aim for realistic graphics in BioShock, and won't for Judas either

(...) BioShock still looks good because it wasn't trying to get every nut and bolt super realistically rendered. It was a style."

Totally agreed, and the same goes for almost every other game with stylized graphics too (well, the good ones). Art direction trumps graphical fidelity every time, and stylized graphics don't run into the uncanny valley problem of attempted (but not quite successful) photorealistic graphics.

Style always wins over realism, but we can't pretend that BioShock didn't have amazing graphics for the time.

As the article rightly points out, the mid 2000s were the peak of the graphics war. Every new game was in an arms race to be the most jaw-dropping yet, and BioShock's impressive visuals were no exception.

But yes, it also has style, and style is why it's still a beauty nearly two decades later.

While yes, BS1 was overrated and also overly greenish due to trends in the industry, making it harder to revisit now.