Portal is a good example of a game that has AAA quality graphics in terms of lighting, materials, etc but wisely chooses a simplified art direction. If you strip a Portal level down to its functional elements it could basically be an N64-era environment.

I respect the craftsmanship of this style of design, and I enjoy reading about it. I also think a lot of games work better with simpler, more abstract level design. (I also realize that business concerns drive lots of these decisions, Good Graphics sell more games)

This style of design loses the instant visual clarity of older, hardware-limited, more abstract levels. As you point out, there is a toolbox of clever tricks that designers can use to subtly guide the player through these dense, noisy, naturalistic levels.

I read and I mostly agree with your take. To elaborate on my post: there is a style of level design where the goal is to make the level look like a realistic place, and to sort of disguise that it's a relatively small and contrived play area.

I like when games give the player agency over the difficulty in small subtle ways. Choosing between 3 known encounters in Evil Egg lets me avoid super evil mixes of enemies, or risk it if the reward is a really good artifact etc. Overall I think the difficulty curve feels great.

You're not wrong, but I would consider this an argument against photoreal graphics being a necessary or good thing for most games in the first place.

Plant best character 🌱 I prefer classic plant over the b-skin so I'm excited to have a third option.