Not true; the wannabe NC legend is a core theme of the game. Smasher got there by being absolutely ruthless and navigating Arasaka by the same ethos (i.e none).

RT is of course a shortcut too, it’s not an exact representation of how light actually behaves…

RT also makes level-design simpler for the development team as they can design levels by what-you-see-is-what-you-get method rather than having to bake the light sources.

It’s not a trick, it’s just lighting done the way it should be done without all the tricks we need now like Subsurface scattering or Screen space reflections.

The added benefit is that materials reflect more of their natural reflection making all the materials look more true to life.

Its main drawback is that it’s GPU costly, but more and more AAA games are now moving toward RT as standard by being more clever in how it handles its calculations.