Gorgeous Looking Game that Don't Have Amazing Graphics

[Nouw]

Arkham Asylum is really just black/brown/grey and green =P but it looks pretty good. Note that I have an SD TV...goddamn small text...

 

[Soxafloppin]

The 2008 Prince of Persia, in my mind the most boring game in the series, but still it did look great in its own way.

 

[Koroviev]

I love the aesthetics of Professor Layton and the Persona series. I'll take crisp animation over low-res 3D any day.

 

[blxtnsq]

Morrowind. Even without texture mods and the graphics extender, the game is beautiful. Yeah, you take each model and texture by itself and it makes you laugh but put them all together and it makes a masterpiece. There's something haunting about rushing around in the wilderness for hours to come across a Telvanni pod tower looming out of the mist.
And standing on top of the Sadrith Mora tower with the graphics extender is probably one of the most beautiful views that's sadly missing from the vanilla game with its stupid fog >:

And Divinity II atm. It's practically impossible to get the anti-aliasing to work (and the game looks like ass without it) but when you do, some scenes are just awesome. The canyons in the fjords and the alchemist's platform come to mind

 

[Gigaguy64]

Metriod Prime had some absolutely AMAZING environments.

 

[VildVittran]

Shadow of the Colossus definitely qualifies, it's just so pretty... And I agree about Morrowind, even though the graphics are dated, the enviroments still look as good as they did when it was new!

 

[mrwoo6]

Garrys mod.

When you've set it up just right so the giant battle combine robot is destroying the rebel forces ontop the 3000 feet tall death fortress and then you just blow it all up.

you can't not be awed in its glory. its just so beautiful.

I've seen more amazing unscripted "dramatic" moments in G-mod than i have in all the scripted "dramatic" moments in CoD.

 

[bbad89]

Team Fortress 2 before all the crappy hat updates.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Metroid prime, Wind waker,3D dot heros,Morrowind, Clive bakers undying,Medievl Resurrection

 

[kebab4you]

I always thought Minecraft looked pretty.. Well, before the biome update..

This. I always loved how beautiful minecraft looked and how nice it was to see from a high tower...but now the biomes are way too close and you look out seeing desert, snow and then tropical island in 6 squares.

Indeed but didn't Notch mention that he would polish the biomes codes so it wouldn't change as frequently?

 

[The Hive Mind]

Jak 2: Renegade. Heavily stylised but still quite beautiful at parts.

Halo 1 + 2: although outdated now, the scenery is still just "...wow"

 

[Cooperblack]

Good old Kotor still looks gorgeous to this very day.

 

[Hosker]

The scenery in Oblivion was amazing. But overall, the graphics weren't great.

 

[Cogwheel]

I kinda found Dwarf Fortress looks pretty good.

Well played, sir. Well played. I've actually fallen for this with Incursion, mind you. That being another, somewhat more traditional roguelike. Stuff like "oh wow, some of this stuff is blue! And I see purple mushrooms over there! This game looks amazing!" Then I caught myself and felt a little silly.

Aside from that? SoTC, of course. Metroid Prime. Oh, and Treasure of the Rudras may be SNES, but one of the sprites for a major boss (can't recall the name) looks amazing.

That and it had segmented, constantly moving sprites for enemies, which was rather impressive in any case.


Edit: Oh yes, this guy.

Spoiler

 

[RicoADF]

Freelancer. The graphics are older by todays standards, but I love the style and it still looks pretty good

 

[C117]

Pretty much everything on the SNES.

 

[Vhite]

I vote for Cultures series.

Spoiler

Also I love how old SNES RPGs look like. Actually, all SNES games look awesome.

 

[Valkyrie101]

Minecraft. Not an original answer, but it's true. Technically it's dreadful, but once you're used to it, some of the structures that I've see really do look incredible; all the more so because they've actually been constructed by someone.

 

[Blue Musician]

I just got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC off of Steam as a recommendation from a friend. I didn't see much of the game prior to buying it, but it sounded interesting enough to buy it. Upon playing, I realize how great the world looked. It's kinda hard to explain, but it just had this saturation and atmosphere that made it stand out and look impressive (it's a very well optimized game as well, on an unrelated note). I had to just wander around for a couple of minutes to really soak in the environment. Added to the effect of wandering into the anomalies just added to atmosphere. So what games can you categorize as "good looking without good graphics"?

Beyond Good and Evil certainly comes to mind. It just looks great, maybe better than most games in my opinion, although it doesn't has the greatest graphics.
Another one is The Void and it has the graphics of a 2004-2005 game, but I haven't been as completely immersed as in any game other than this.
I also liked games I never played, like Shadow of the Colossus and Fatal Frame, but ok, I'm done for now.