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I think Nick's right, and there's value in seeing all these amazing looking games... but! I agree that game art direction has gotten worse. Because all the limits are essentially gone these days, there are very few technical hurdles forcing people to make good art decisions.

AAA developers are no longer tasked with coming up with an art style that fits gameplay restrictions, technical budgets, and art team capabilities The Good, Fast, Cheap triangle for video game graphics capabilities is going away, so suddenly high fidelity realism has become the default

I don't think the triangle has gone away, it just changed shape. It's easier to hit "fine" without sacrificing speed or cost, so studios are less likely to invest enough in "good". But "fine" is really just "engine defaults" and everything looks like AC or Fortnite.

To twist the analogy further, the "good" axis is probably still the same length, too - investment in quality has even more potential than it used to, but you have to sell that to the penny pinchers. And that counts for everything from VFX (Control) to fidelity (007) to art direction (MIO).