After thinking about it I have reconsidered

Yeah they fucked up everything that has to do with people in MEA. Faces, body proportions, animations. Everything.

And I do think the game lacks an iconic style like the trilogy had, especially ME2.

But going by textures and lighting effects and all that post processing stuff, MEA is one of the prettiest games I've ever played. Definitely when it comes to RPGs which never look as good as a 10h shooter.

The surface textures are the best I've seen to date in any game. The ice caves, wow...

Both MEA and DAI have superior landscape TEXTURES to W3. Especially the flora in W3 looks like crap close up. Blurry as fuck. Buildings aren't impressive either if you look closely. Leaves in DAI are super hi-res on PC. The thing is that W3 focused on people, especially armor is extremely detailed. Beards in W3 look GREAT.
So sure, if you only compare faces, MEA looks like crap in comparison to Ciri or Geralt.

I would even say DAI had a better art style. W3 has little variety to offer. Mostly European countryside (dictated by the setting of course). An idealized version but... I remember how disappointed I was about W3 at first visually. I don't really care for a realistic look in games. I liked how diverse and colorful DAI was.

MEA while pretty looks a bit bland. Generic desert, generic ice world... Havarl has a really nice look and atmosphere though. Doesn't look THAT alien but offers something that's definitely not a part of Earth stretched over a whole planet.

Fun but bland is how I would describe MEA. It lacks personality. W3 oozes personality through characters and world building, less so the environments. Lots of attention to detail. A populated world too. Going by texture quality alone W3 is not the prettiest game out there. That downgrade was real. I was so not impressed with the graphics. Good but didn't understand all the drooling online, DAI looked better. There is a consistent style though. And style and overall art design is what people notice and often mistake for superior graphics. And there is nothing remarkable about MEA. So it SEEMS worse than the trilogy when cleary from a technical point of view the graphics in MEA are much much better. The skin textures are better too. The hair textures while bad are still way way better than the trilogy.

I consider W3 a much better game than DAI or MEA, but credit where credit is due. The visuals of the game are actually not the problem here. It's how nothing came together well to form a coherent and compelling product that makes MEA look like a bland jumbled together mess riddled with bugs.