This "semi-realism but not so much realism that it actually has to look realistic" shit is so dull.
The "art style" of Exped33 is this exact shit. Grating, "realistic", yet looks like the default for unreal demos.
Otis Mallebrok is right. An engine is just a glorified code library, sometimes with an IDE attached. People nowadays seem to think it's a more powerful and customizable version of a tool like Mario Maker and hence it dictates the looks. It does not. Even by default with the lightning and shaders you would get if you were very lazy, UE games don't look like the "UE artstyle", they look like Travis Strikes Again or that bird skateboard game.
What the UE artstyle TRULY is, is pseudorealistic assets made by asset making companies/contractors mostly in Europe and India. They have either the generic realistic look or alternative the fortnite-esque/crash 4 "gummy cartoon" look because they have to be very generic as they will have to be bought by a vast amount of different developers, hence they aren't customized to a specific artstyle, and if anything, are made devoid of artstyle. In turn, the gaming industry has started to pivot to these two artstyles in order to be able to exploit these generic assets farm instead of producing them in-house. I think that's fine when it comes to indie games actually, because probably a lot of them wouldn't be able to make the 3d game they wanted to if they had to make all these 3d assets in-home. That was the case for exp33, which started with that fortnite-esque artstyle and then became more realistic, but by their own admission the devs bought a shitload of shit from the marketplace and they wouldn't have been able to ship a game that big, or make a 3d game at all, if they hadn't. But this is downright embarassing and not excusable for big companies considering their budget. especially when the games don't even have redeemable qualities anyway and run like shit.
To make shit even worse, normies are downright braindead and have been conditioned to think realistic open world = good game. I am not a Game Freak apologist, far from it, but every time a pokemon game was released normies go "uuh why doesn't this look and play like Red Dead Redemption 2? They make so much money hence they should make the game like that!" Normies believe anything else but GTAslop is a worse game and everything has to move towards that goal if they are successful, mocking and crying about everything else. This is why Devil May Cry moved to realistic-slop with mo-cap. This is why CDPR changed course halfway through CP2077 hiring Keeanu Reeves and mockup actor. ANOTHER further layer of bullshit is that Geoff Kneightley created a meta-videogame environment of promotion where the games which are the most exposed by his shows and the press are those with pseudorealistic graphics, generic hollywood soundtrack and actor mock-up performances, all of which encourage the realistic "UE5 look approach"
It's a giant uroboros eating its tail, a vicious cycle of saving money on assets and pandering to the brain-deadest of normies. By default, UE5 is shit and destroys performance, but the fault for the generic look is 100% on the developers.