Well I really cannot agree less with you, some of the most hyped up graphics and cut scene farting wonders like MGS4, Killzone2, God of War are the LEAST immersive games EVER TO BE CREATED.
If immersion was depended on graphics how come I am still totally immersed in old games like DEUS EX, Half Life and so on, to be honest they fucking hurt my eyes till they bleed but it is worth it.
But here is Killzone 2 graphics up the bum spouting out cut scenes from the mouth and I just keep asking myself, why am I fighting a ground war? Why am I not bombing the shit out of this planet? Why am I sent down to the ground to invade a city while I could have just been dropped straight down into the palace, why are we fighting such a costly attrition war when we have a billion space ships in orbit that could take out enemy installations from across the galaxy?
Now because people spent most of those years hyping on graphics they totally forgot the story. PoP another casualty in the Graphics versus story battle, years of developping an art style which would have looked sweet if the gameplay didn't annoy you so much you'd rather play through the game to see the ending, which is completely out of your hands and undoes ALL the things you worked for playing the game by a decision YOU the player would never make in a beautiful and immersion shattering gameplay-cutscene.
The fact is story and gameplay can safe any game, how many Zelda's have been laid out in front of us, but it is still fine because the story is sort of different each time and graphics didn't even change a pixel for like 3-4 games and they still sold. We just get a peek more into a fantastic world that will hopefully evolve further the next time we come back. The fact that God of War sold is not immersion, nor graphics, it was violence, button mashing evil violence. The fact that Kratos had no social blocker of the amount of pain he could dish out or how big an ass he could be made God of War sell, I will never forget the Captain he pushed down a hydra's throat after taking his amulet before using him as a stepping stone to prevent falling into Hades.
That is another IMPORTANT part of making a game, character development. Most characters now are either American or stupid, this presents a problem to the rest of the world who can relate to neither. When the prince spouted of in his American accent I quickly lost interest in him as a character. But when Kratos did it it was OK because he talked in a slightly accented American plus we have an ancient story NARRATOR which explains WHY everything is English, we are seeing a retelling.
It is Story and Gameplay (and characters) that drive games not graphics. The sooner developers realise that having new graphics is cool, we like seeing our hero's look more and more like us, but when it is graphics over gameplay be prepared not to get my money.
