Videos games aren’t supposed to be realistic. I’m not supposed to put myself in the position of a real socom or seal or delta or recons or X18 for that matter. I don’t want to.play a video game that represents reality. That’s not what video games are about. Video games are supposed to be void of reality. Destiny, baldurs gate, elder scrolls, Mario, metal gear, etc… That’s what video gaming is supposed to be. Not real situations that could/would occur like call of duty. CoD is a garbage game and it’s offensive for them to remaster the bullshit and then expect people to pay for the bullshit that they couldn’t justify having paid for when the game(s] was first released. Do not fall for the Microsoft trap
I think realistic videogames have a niche called “Simulators”. And while they stay there, I’m absolutely fine with it.
The problem, I believe, is that people often confuse realism with level of detail. And the main issue with this is that the line separating both is extremely thin sometimes. Additionally, a degree of realism is welcome in any game, as long as the game keeps being a game and not a simulator (e.g. on a car racing game, I want the cars to look like cars and to drive like cars, even if I want it to stay arcade-y enough)
Would you say Breath of the Wild is a realistic game? I think it isn’t, but the level of detail put in their physics engine is so detailed that it’s almost real, but at the same time feels like a videogame and not like a simulator.
In all the games you mentioned, there is a degree of realism (for example, in metal gear, it’s realistic that enemies can’t see you behind a wall or that they get alerted if they see a corpse), just not enough to make them look like a simulator instead of a game, this is what I mean with level of detail.