I strongly disagree with this. There’s good and bad level design for all eras of games. In fact, you could argue limited graphical possibilities limits some things in games like gta, which in each era it comes out prides itself on looking more and more like irl. It’s part of the fun if the game. You get to do insane stuff in a mirror of the real world. It also aids immersion. It’s harder to feel like you’re in the world when everything looks like play dough. Games like red dead are a lot better when the graphics make you feel you’re standing right there.

And just having lower graphics doesn’t mean better level design. You do realize it’s not the same people working on graphics and levels, especially for large game development companies. If a modern game is worse it’s just because it’s worse.

Personally I’m not huge in graphics and I’ll play anything if it’s fun, but if you’re capable of it why not have everything look a little nicer? I’ll pick ps2 era games like metal gear solid 2 over most modern games, but that doesn’t mean they should just stop improving graphics. I absolutely love the old mortal kombats and I’ve found the modern ones to be extremely lacking, but one thing I do enjoy is how nice everything looks. It just adds a little flavour.