I think I often get bogged down in the "but what is real?" philosophical discussion when it comes to photography. RAW images look absolutely horrible and need some degree of work to get them into a presentable state, which always leaves me wondering how much is too much, and how much is not enough? Even if I go back to the days of colour films, there were so many different saturations and colour balances it was hard to know what was most "realistic", and it varied according to circumstance... and most of all, taste. Which is why I mentioned Velvia: I like saturated colours, and it's the sort of thing that triggers my memories a lot more than the perhaps understated equivalents. That said, Velvia sucked for portraits, but portrait film often looked a bit uninspiring for many landscapes.
But really I don't mind as long as it's not the washed out deadness of Skyrim (yeah I know, excepting the slightly more colourful south-eastern corner with its nice autumnal silver birches, although I've long since forgotten what that originally looked like without all manner of tweaks, retextures and other fiddling that made me think "argh, too many decisions").
