This has everything to do with art direction, and not technology.

The real world has much more light bouncing fidelity than even modern games. There are still dark things we can't see.

Physically based rendering should be exactly the opposite of what the article is complaining about: it gives you the "correct" way to communicate how light is moving through a space. So the player and the game designer should be able to communicate much more easily, and the artists should be able to focus on actually communicating what they need to, instead of tweaking non physical phong and ambient lighting parameters