I think I get what you're saying, and I agree. It isn't really as simple as "just remove/replace the meat", because plant proteins simply just cook and handle differently than meat, and often time the meat is the core focus of a dish. Instead, the focus should be on recipes that are built around their ingredients. They can have a similar purpose to a traditional meat dish (I will take a black bean burger over a regular hamburger any day), but ultimately should be prepared different.
Also, in my opinion, tofu is amazing when it isn't just used as a drop-in meat replacement. It goes really great with sauces and also fries pretty well.
I would consider photorealism to mainly be light-based (prefix photo meaning light), but I get what you mean. I'd consider photorealism and realism to be separate. "I can see that existing" vs "I can see myself being there"
A better example probably would've been claymation, or pokemon concierge.
Counterpoint: I like pretty lights and don't mind having to play at a suboptimal framerate if it means more detail that I'm going to notice and enjoy.
Also, I keep seeing people confusing photorealism with a lack of style, when that's just not true. Pixar movies for example are photorealistic but stylized. You can have fancy lights and cool styles.
remember when they managed to squeeze a game with 3d+music into a CD? (Lego island)
Back then a CD had about as much storage as your entire hard drive. Also, lego island isn't really a AAA game. A AAA game from 1997 would be something like final fantasy 7, which came on two whole CDs. Drive capacity hit a boom around the 2000s and 2010s, and only recently have AAA games been catching up.
People always want to blame this shit on game developers being lazy, and they're not wrong that a lot of AAA games are bug ridden messes designed to please shareholders. But games are getting more and more complex, and these developers are being forced to work under strict time constraints.
That doesn't mean there isn't room to improve. Maybe offering different download options depending on your storage needs should become a common practice (iirc some games used to do that back when internet bandwidth was limited).
