Please don't hate on me, but I don't think an *explicit* story is that important, or even wanted for me. I prefer what is called "environmental storytelling." Just my two examples:

* Myst: the game sequence and visuals make it clear what's happened: you are lost in a world you don't understand and have to explore to make sens of the puzzles. The primary enjoyment comes from figuring out how to proceed. I only read all of the books/journals to find clues to the puzzles, I don't much care what Atrus's father did, or what was their home world called, etc.

* Skyrim: all I need to know is I'm in a medieval fantasy setting, and am about to enter a dungeon/cave to kill some monsters and get some treasure. If the graphics are moody enough to convince me of this, I don't need to know why the king sent me, or why his brother moved to wherever to anger him, or why his lineage...

I was going to get one of the new consoles and then saw them in action... virtually no AA. They look like a slightly higher-res 360 or PS3 with a little more defined textures. Is that what 8+ years of graphics hardware can do?

I get that devs want to go for FPS and polygons rather than AA... but at this point, to me, I'd rather have a 360/PS3 game with 8x AA and a little more texture resolution than a million particle system that gets wasted on the background (i.e. not part of gameplay).