Personally I could give a shit less if this game isn't super amazing looking (my issue is with the game's horrendous camera), but this statement simply isn't true. With modern engines, it's very much possible to have amazing looking games with even small development studios. The Forest for instance is one of the best looking Unity games and it's only made by four people.

I fail to see the comparison. It seems like you saw floating text and assumed the games were inherently the same as a result of that, which doesn't seem to be the case whatsoever.

Looks pretty, and it seems to have pretty decent gameplay elements like the detective work, which is more than I was expecting. Definitely didn't assume this was gonna be in first person. Looks surprisingly good.

Dafuq is going on with the camera? Looks horrible. I can't tell what the hell is even happening half the time.

He's a ball of contradictions.

I am surprised he hasn't talked about how he's a decorated marine that's served five tours in Iraq, and plans on coming to those little shitheads houses to pound them!

Looks pretty cool. The use of mice gives it a very Pikmin-esque world vibe.

This one actually looks pretty fucking good though. From the gameplay videos we've seen, there seems to be far less cutscenes and comm chatter than in previous MGS games--thanks in large part to Keifer Sutherland's incredibly expensive voice acting.

That wasn't even particularly good Quake Live footage, as the guy isn't really demonstrating the intricacies of the movement much in that video. You can't really compare the two. Quake Live is just in a different stratosphere when it comes to skill.

I don't take many competitive FPSs too seriously though. Playing Insurgency atm--fun as hell.

I think the 30fps is definitely technical limitations, but the 1920x800p is likely done for aesthetics. If they really wanted to make it a full 1080p, they'd simply have to reduce it down from MSAA4X to a more reasonable SMAA solution (which I think should be done--MSAA isn't that good imo without some SMAA).