Yes, it absolutely matters. If we lived in a world where visual effects didn't matter, we'd be playing this on Excel.
Good lord, even pen and paper games like D&D delve into themes, specialties and otherwise "pointless" details and trivialities. Games are all chock full of things that serves no real purpose at all towards the gameplay, but people still love them because they do things like flesh out the world, make things look beautiful, and, of course, the rule of cool.
"Does it really matter what the visual effect is?" you say. To that I could ask you, why did you choose to be a Hrothgar? Does it really matter what your race is? Both your quest and mine very likely have the same answer.
