It takes A LOT of work and planning to get light and shadow correct in a raster setting. Most AAA games don't bother. Raytracing makes it easy to get them right, which will make all the difference in the world.

I had a similar experience working a bit with Radiance years ago. The output looked mediocre, at best, but it was reporting a real view of the scene; it's call to fame is that it outputs real energy values in physical units (like energy per unit solid angle or luminance or such). But despite the cartoony models I provided, it did demonstrate subtleties that weren't hacks (needed for this application), things that you wouldn't think to or bother implementing directly.

This? This grabs a lot of needed visual artifacts faster and more correctly without crazy hacks (or so it seems - it does say hybrid rendering).

There's a reason Nvidia employs top CG talent for their hardware demos. A pretty demo sells more than an ugly one, even if they essentially pull off the same effect.