I'm not sure what release date has to do with anything, OP was asking for best looking games, not decent looking games with lower detailed models. Crysis was 07 and is still one of the best looking games out there. Roll your eyes elsewhere.
Morrowind was amazing for it's time, but you don't see me mentioning it here.
And you
conveniently disregarded anything in that post of mine after "IV."
Release date had to do with that because, in your
point of view you're comparing a
VANILLA 2008 game (since you maintain that the game lacks "detailed textures", which is true
if you ignore the rest of my statement) with a pair of 2010 games, "vanilla" at that but have detailed textures already.
Also the ENB series mod actually outputs the textures at twice your playing resolution (that's why the opening Rockstar Games credits looks that way). I tried tweaking the config, more than 2x is a slideshow since it was already barely playable LOL (I since removed ENB though and stuck with Improved Graphics Mod w/o ENB - although having ENB makes it look great, it's actually barely playable LOL).
"but the models in that game lack the detailed textures" <-- so what was the mods for? How would there have been an "Improved Graphics" if the lack of detailed textures was still not addressed?