An item that should stand out to the protagonist might not stand out to the player. A dime on the floor might be two pixels wide on the screen, given the camera angle, and easy to miss. But would a good detective, even one who just gave the floor a cursory scan, miss it? I don't think so.
Eliminating pixel hunting removes a gap between the player and the protagonist and, as such, is a Good Thing.
What is not a good thing is if only super-important items are highlighted. There ought to be red herrings, too. The main character shouldn't be given a supernatural sense of what is important and what is irrelevant, beyond that which they're usually given by default. (It's bad enough that adventure game heroes can tell that they'll need the rubber chicken later, but not the car tire in the background.)
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