There are two main schools of thought on the direction of aesthetic design and graphics in video games; realistic graphics or an intentionally stylised design. And just like 3rd person and 1st person, one is not explicitly greater than the other, and just comes down to preference.
Realistic "graphics" refers to an aesthetic style which is intended to be realistic as possible given the current hardware capabilities. Generally this is considered more desirable and impressive by most people. As our technology and artistic skills increase so to does our ability to graphically render more realistic looking video games. An immediate drawback to this is that graphics now take majority of a personal computers grunt, the mere existence of graphics cards prove this, however this also means that as we want to improve graphics we must also improve the hardware and graphical engines that power these games, pushing forward computing technology. Focusing on this style of aesthetics also has other practical applications such as generating photos of you in different countries so you can look important on facebook, when you in fact spent your time modelling your own face and not learning about photoshop, there are also medical applications but who cares about that.
Meanwhile what people refer to as stylised aesthetics or graphics is where the aesthetic style of a game forgoes the attempt at creating the most realist appearance they could in favour of something more artistic. There is a distinct advantage to stylised aesthetics over realistic ones is a timeless appearance. Focusing on designing a game based on a particular art style allows the games appearance to never look dated aside from the resolution (which can be updated most of the time), cell shading (comic book style lighting) with solid lines in games is a good example of this, provided that the models are smooth enough and the game has skilled artists a game will forever look good as a homage to the art of comic books. However a result of this in contrast to a realist style pushing the technology, the technology could stagnate. If the games look 'good' for extended periods of time without further development companies will start to see that they don't need to put money into furthering the technology used, creating a new status quo for how games are made, which even with many different visual styles from many different artists it will eventually hit a wall and just stop dead flat and just like Call of Duty it will all be the same shit.
Ultimately we need both realistic and stylised graphics, both because everyone has a different preference and because we need to continue the technology but still preserve masterful games.
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