Control and Resident Evil 2 Remake still look incredible and run well on fairly inexpensive hardware today. We don't need globally illuminated Unreal Engine 5 games with individually modeled nostril hairs on each character that require graphics cards with prices in the three digit range
Graphics should just be kept at late PS4 level for the foreseeable future to keep games as accessible as possible
Back in 2002 FFXI had special sequences for making your character that pushed the PS2 to it's limit and still look pleasing today. If graphics stayed like this I would be fine with that.
Silent Hill 3, 4 and Haunting Ground had some incredible looking character models on the PS2. The PS2 had a ton of really great looking games on it and I wish there were indie developers out there trying to replicate that aesthetic instead of the PS1
Yeah there's something appealing about how they look. It's a nice level of fidelity while being able to be run on potatoes for the average person.
Gran Turismo 4 had stunning graphics, completely pushed the PS2 to it's limits
These were cool to look at but then you get in the game and your cute female Hume actually looks like a turtle. The In-game graphics did not match at all. Still a big fan though.
Yeah Square did those scenes obviously for promotional material and like you said it didn't match the actual in-game models sadly.
Shenmue's Passport disc did kind of the same thing, having high poly character models for scenes of just talking and no in-game play.