Because its become fashionable. At this point it actually doesn't matter how good or bad a game looks, people will still complain. Honestly. Even if some of these 2013 trailers that people keep going on about how great they look.. even if the game released with that fidelity, people would still complain about it, and then double complain because it runs like ass on their l33t hardware and isn't optimized. Its literally a lose lose for pretty much every game maker out there.

Well I thought GTAV was pretty spot on with what it presented. It was also pretty damn well optimized and looks pretty amazing considering the scale and amount of NPCs. This is unlike WD, where the trailer clearly showed higher quality graphics. As for Fallout, I think it is just because it is an extremely anticipated title, plus the next one in the series could be many years away, that it should launch with at least somewhat cutting edge or at least around the same fidelity of games being launched this year. I'm still getting it, because I love the gameplay and world of the previous titles, but can't help feel that the experience could have been a tiny bit better with maybe upgraded graphics (or textures at least) to boost the atmosphere of the game. Hopefully what we saw was worse than what the final product will be, but that usually isn't the case...