Now, can we fix flashlights in games such that we don’t get a well defined circle of lit area surrounded by completely a black environment? Light doesn’t work that way, it bounces and scatters, meaning that a room with a light in it should almost never be completely dark. I always end up ignoring the “adjust the gamma until some wiggle is just visible” setup pages and just blow the gamma out until I can actually see a reasonable amount in the dark areas.

Yes, really dark places should be really dark. But, once you add a light to the situation, they should be a lot less dark.