I still think that a 16 year old game like Crysis has no place to look as good as it does today. A semi open world with fully destructible environment, tactics from your opponents and one of the best jungle environments to this days, with probably some of the best explosions to this day...

Contrast it with with 1991 games vs it. Graphics and videogame mechanics have definitely slowed, by a whole lot. There was no new paradigm to follow the one that brought us to the mid '00s...

Having said that , it is to be expected. The industry has matured, you need exponentially more money with very little return (both in results and money from said results). It's the prototypical S curve.

Next step in videogames would only happen when we change the medium (say being in them instead of controlling within a screen). By then there would be a fresh reason to progress fast... we are not there yet.