What do aesthetics mean to you in a game?

I think I still love World of Warcraft because I love the way Azeroth looks.

I mean this in a wide variety of ways. I love the look of individual zones and regions of Azeroth — from the Howling Fjords to the Storm Peaks, from the Dragon Isles to Tanaris, from Pandaria to the Burning Steppes there’s so much variety and beauty to the world we explore in the game. I mean, I should probably also say worlds we explore, because in The Burning Crusade, Warlords of Draenor, and Shadowlands there were moments of such stark environmental beauty that I am, to this day, enamored of them. I often go to Ardenweald simply to see it.

And that doesn’t include all the things I enjoy aesthetically that aren’t on that scale. I love transmog entirely because I enjoy tailoring my character’s look specifically, and I also love the constantly expanding palette of options in terms of what my character looks like — the means to choose their appearance as a way of designating who they are and what they’re all about appeals to me greatly. And I will just now admit that I’m also a pure fan of gigantic swords and ridiculous shoulder armor. I know some of this stuff is absolutely ridiculous and requires a very strong suspension of disbelief, but I’m still an extreme fan of gigantic boat sized swords or ludicrous axes that would never work in the real world.

I purely embrace it when WoW gets away from realism. I don’t play the game for realism: I play the game for over the top escapism, and I love it when the look of the game reflects that.

Another game series I love for entirely different reasons. Diablo as a series has a grim, splatterpunk-meets-gothic-horror look that I’ve always enjoyed, for example. Sure, it’s also got big weapons and some pretty over the top armor, but in the end there’s a different vibe to the series rooted in the feeling of decay and apocalypse the art style evokes. It really helps sell the game’s atmosphere of taking arms against the forces of evil and darkness in a probably doomed world.

So now I’m going to open the floor to you all — how important are a game’s aesthetics to you? How much does how it looks contribute to your enjoyment of it?