Narbacular Drop maybe was a shallow tech demo, but that same tech-based premise, when used by a masterful game design team, created one of the best video games of all time.
What has the story and design of Portal to do with graphics? Nothing, because story and design are independent of it. Would Portal be an equally great game if done with the engine used in Narbacular Drop, but with the same design and story. Yes, again graphics has nothing to do with story and design.
So to reiterate. What made Portal great has nothing to do with how many pixels you fit on the screen or how many shadows you can render. What made Portal great was story, design and the tech( portals ).
I disagree. Graphics add nothing to the immersion, unless perhaps on the most shallow level possible, where the entire premise of the game depends purely on the graphics.
In that case I wouldn't call it a game, but more of a tech demo or an interactive experience.
A good description will impact a small percentage that is already familiar with the genre or that franchise. What will mainstream audience do. Believe the your words or your pictures? Games convey information trough the latter. Game magazines are obsolete and no-one reads long articles anymore. You have one minute to impress your audience. Less if it isn't in a form of a youtube video.
I think it is a great selling point. No matter how crappy the final product is, claiming new or better graphics automatically give more sold units.
It is easy to critique a game after you played it. But before you do, the only thing you can do is look. Since you can't interact with the game in any way, what is left is the visuals. And that impression sells the game. Therefore, graphics matter.
I wouldn't mind hitting Quora through Google on occasion, but sometimes they actually have just a stub page, where the question isn't answered at all, so it shouldn't rank so high.