I know the game but honestly I can't stand cartoon rendering, I just hate it.
There's a reason, though, why this game being successful could be important: Raindrop.
Basically the devs from Raindrop (a bunch of inexperienced guys) after their kickstarter failed joined The Long Dark's ones.
I don't want to derail the topic but if this game makes it then there is hope for Raindrop to still be developed.

I know the game but honestly I can't stand cartoon rendering, I just hate it.

So you hate all Tim Schafer games, which means you have no soul.

Begone, soulless demon! I cast you out!

While it has the look of a graphic novel, no comic bubbles appear when you speak, you don't leave smoke trails when running, etc. So I wouldn't say that it fails trying to look like a graphic novel, because it doesn't try to do that. It merely uses that style which works as an artistic abstraction for me. But tastes are different.
Actually I didn't think much about the look of things when playing, because I was preoccupied with a deep survival sim. Only in some cases did I stop to take in the view and then it was mesmerising.

I wouldn't call it cartoon rendering, more graphic novel style. But then I like this style. Since photorealistic rendering never actually achieves full photorealism, some abstraction is preferable for me. It smoothes out the little problems that give away that it's a game usually. This principle isn't limited to this specific style. Mirror's Edge did the same for me.

Yeah, cartoon rendering was too much of a generalization maybe, but my point is that that kind of rendering algorithm, is cartoony.
To be clear they might be using some kind of proprietary rendering algorithm but honestly for me it falls in the same category.
Usually with simpler cartoon like (there're a lot of them) rendering algorithm you can choose 1 colour for the lighted part, 1 for the shadowed part and one for the colour of the object.
This is what is called a cartoon rendering in my experience, more complex ones can improve by drawing borders which can be of constant tickness or variable like when you draw with stylograph pens or some types of brushes.
You can furter improve that by using textures that get mixed with colours in a manner that you decide, more or less crisp, and you can choose to have gradients instead of single colours.
If you look at the images you will notice that they did that: every object has one: lit colour, shadow colour and its own colour.
They applied something like a noise texture to better give the idea of height variation in the terrain and spacial distance and, maybe, they used some sort of gradient . Furtherly it has to be seen exactly what kind of lighting they are using: they could have gone for strong coloured lighting to give more character to the scenes, it has to be seen how their lighting interacts with the cartoon materials they are using.

On a different note I found it interesting how you used cartoon rendering and realistic rendering as opposites, not because you wrote something wrong but because often we tend to simplify .
Honestly for me they aren't opposites: rendering algorithms are tools and are more or less all the same (except for cartoon ones, those ones I really can't stand them) you know there are a lot of them and their use is tied to what artistic/technical result you want to achieve or technical constraints you are hindered by.
But there can be artistic images realistically rendered as well as pseudo realistic ones cartoon rendered exactly like in the painting: for example take Goya and Guttuso or Caravaggio and Van Gogh, or design drawings where you can find mixed media.
Or more simply you can choose cartoon like rendering algorithm because you don't want to spend too much time or resources or because simply you are not good at textures and then you can concentrate on other aspects, like you said, be them gameplay mechanics, a good intro, plot and so on.
Or that is just the visual style they want to achieve.
Or, and that may be the case, they decided to go lean geometry and fidelity wise and that kind of rendering algorithm is what suits better their needs or their constraints, nothing wrong eh, it's just taht I don't... I can't... ohh...

Your experience is wrong. This is called cel shading.

No, unfortunately I wasn't talking about cel shading specifically.
My experience is right, maybe you missed the point or misunderstood what is written in the page you linked.
Basically I was talking about cartoon like rendering algorithms in general: in the bit you quoted I was saying that those features are common to the majority of them, It would have been time consuming and honestly useless (I was addressing the images linked in the most general way because I actually don't know what rendering algorithm they are using precisely) to talk specifically of every cartoon like rendering algorithm, imho, as a sane human at least.
To be clear there are many cartoon like rendering algorithms and cel shading is just one of them but not THE one I was specifically talking about, because I intentionally was speaking in general of features that tools like that usually have, especially in the bit you carefully cut. If you read the page you linked you come across this: "[...] Black "ink" outlines and contour lines can be created using a variety of methods. One popular method is to first render a black outline, slightly larger than the object itself. Backface culling is inverted and the back-facing triangles are drawn in black. [...]"
In the partial quoting you did I wasn't talking about borders at all, in fact, after that I wrote: "This is what is called a cartoon rendering in my experience, more complex ones can improve by drawing borders which can be of constant tickness or variable like when you draw with stylograph pens or some types of brushes." And you know what? I could go on listing features, but, would have been right in the economy of the discussion?
Basically the same thing written in the page you linked and, yes, cel shading is ONE toon like rendering algorithm but still I was not specifically referring to it in the bit you quoted since those features are common to the majority of cartoon like rendering algorithms. I included it, though, as other ones, always generally speaking, in my next sentence.

Unlike previous media a computer is conceptually a universal machine and therefore has no inherent limitations that could form a media specific style. What's giving it era specific styles are hardware performance limitations. Like the ghosting of early green screen monitors (Matrix effect).
If that seems to be the same thing as e.g. dogears on a book, note that the Gutenberg galaxy lasted around 500 years and before that there were handwritten manuscripts for more than 2000 years. That's 2500 years of dogears at least. Compare that to the 10-20 years that monochrome monitors dominated the market. 

System Shock is a good example of this: The higher resolutions we can use today were already laid out in the game when it was written in 1994. IIRC it was ToxicFrog who first enabled them and made mention of this fact. System Shock's visual style may seem irrevocably intertwined with a low res aesthetic, but only because even if you had a monitor that could display 1280x768 at the time it would have been too slow to play.

Hardware limitations are changing quickly though. While games from the 1980s home-computer era still had a recognisable look due to stricter hardware limitations then, this diversified a lot in the 90s and after. And this will continue. There will never be a style for computer games that "is shaped out of the unique possibilities of the interactive 3D medium itself". Because computers as such have no such limitations.
The interactive 3D medium will foreseeable expand into virtual reality with stuff like Oculus Rift. And while that will make a huge difference in the way we experience computer games, it's still just an untapped hardware potential that's already been in the first System Shock and potentially in any 3D game.

That is a current hardware limitation which will last for a few years. But it isn't a media specific style.

You might argue that hardware makes up the media and as such its limitations are a part of its style. I think they are too short lived for that. Or you could define C64 games as a specific medium, then you'd have a specific style for it. But as long as we're talking about "computer games" or even wider "the interactive 3D medium" there's no such thing as media specific styles.

Yes, of course. That's why I like games with some abstraction layer. (Not the only reason though.)
A few years is a relative term. I'm not into prophecies, but judging from the development (and acceleration thereof) of just the last 30 years it seems clear that we will achieve full photorealism within a limited timeframe.

Two examples of games I would say have found their media specific styles.
Kentucky Route Zero and Pillars of Eternity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQOaz1xFOo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKoDTzea79Y

Of course you could argue "retro" (especially for Pillars) but 3D was available when Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale came out. Anyway staying a step or two behind cutting edge is probably a good strategy for finding such a media specific style.
As for Kentucky Route Zero I have never seen anything quite like it in other graphic media - and more importantly the style fits the "presentation" (don't want to say "gameplay" here)

Can't access steam at the moment unfortunately, I'd love to try The long Dark

I hope there's bacon in this game.  Wouldn't be fully Canadian without bacon

 
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No zombies? Sign me the fuck up!