Okay, so after spending some real time with the RT on Elden Ring, I am very pleased with it. Listen, my eyes have over 500 hours on this game with no RT, and while it's not earth-shattering, it's basically a perfect improvement. Nothing about the fundamental visual representations change. But textures have such nice pop. All of the colors are both more natural and more varied. With the added illumination, shadows ARE more washed out, which some will decry as being too flat. I just find it more natural... again, especially in the color department. You can even see it on your own weapons and armor - it just pops that much more. Everything looks cleaner.
Also, it looks like we actually did get the full suite, but cut down. You can see the noise in the shadows... there are RT shadows to be found if you look close, but they clearly are not working with many rays or filtering. They're not super accurate, just accurate enough for that zoomed-out 3rd person view. Reflections on things like water are hybrid. The GI is by far the most prominent, and I'm glad because to me it is the most important. You don't appreciate a simple thing like having the colors of lights and shadows correctly influence how textures appear until you see it. After that, you can't mistake the absence of it when it's not there. The RT itself is not dramatically noticeable, though you may find yourself somehow more 'taken' by the images in ways that are difficult to point directly at. What IS noticeable, however, is how stark and 'disconnected' the various elements look when you disable it. Yes, there is more contrast, but it's like something is missing.
I don't like using realism to describe it. Video game environments often have a lot of realistic features, but their style is not 'realism' in the sense that they are still deviating heavily from how reality looks. Realism is about representing reality down to the finest details. The moment the lighting becomes even a little 'atmospheric' it has lost that. Realism is kind of is the definition of plain and everyday in terms of how it depicts reality. It's all about plain details. Games are at most, more like 'cinematic' or 'photorealistic', like reality+ than say, the bare realism of early renaissance times.
What I WILL say is that I think RTGI ups something I'd rather call the "plausibility." Plausibility in an image has little to do with its correlation to expectations for reality. You can deviate wildly from that and it still looks 'correct'. For instance, a Salvador Dali painting is the furthest thing possible from realism while still having recognizable objects and forms... and yet it all seems plausible within it's own universe. Part of what makes them so striking is how well they convince you that things just look that way and it should make sense to you. It's about INTERNAL visual consistency, how well the image incorporates the various elements. How well it conforms to its own given expectations and promises. When it comes to more abstract styles of drawing and painting, the way you place light and how the things you draw respond to it is basically instrumental to the 'success' of the end result. A more captivating image will usually have a more involved lighting dynamic that ties together the more abstract elements and gives the whole thing a better sense of cohesiveness and texture. The more seamlessly those things mesh and reinforce one another, the more automatic the suspension of disbelief tends to be. And again, this is something that works as well with hard realism as it does with entirely fantastical or surreal styles. In fact, it's more vital in the latter, where the lack of normal reference points will throw a person off, as all they have are the dynamics between the different aspects shown in the piece.
When it comes to Elden Ring's use of RTGI, I think it clears that plausibility mark. That's the only way I can describe it. It's still a fantasy world, but visually it feels somehow more complete. Everything just makes more sense. And it sounds crazy, but I think it's mostly down to the color dynamics that RTGI introduces. They nailed it, man. It looks so nice. Or more, these images feel nice, like they somehow have more granular texture to them. Materials I would've passed up suddenly look more interesting to me. And again... I have over 500 hours of play, yet it looks fresher to me now than on day 1 of playing. RTGI produces images that at times seem flatter, but as you adjust, you find that even those moments have a lot more going on with them than they used to, that justifies it perceptually and makes you forget that impression and start to sense more depth instead. The reason they are superficially 'flatter' is because there are entirely new lighting dynamics filling everything out, and you can begin to pick those apart and see how the light behavior comes together to make what is ultimately a better image. Definitely better and worse to it, but sometimes it is ultimately better to have less contrast. Not everything SHOULD be full contrast imo. It's kind of an odd experience, though - you almost can't believe how the images affect you, like things shouldn't seem as different as they do, just based on what you are consciously picking up on visually. There's no clear reason you can point to for why that is.
It's super-weird stuff. I get why some people doubt it, but like I said before, I think your average person hugely takes for granted how they actually see things. Personally, getting into photogrophy is what got me more plugged into the nuances of game visuals. I think before that, I wouldn't have cared about RTGI myself. But after having to try and wrangle light with machines, always contending with the fact that light doesn't fully behave as seems to in the eye, I've come to really appreciate this focus on further granulating how light works in games, and I think it stands to improve the visuals of games done in virtually any style. This game is just another example of that in my book.
