yes.. because metascores and their first game is indicative of how well fh2 will be.. /sarcasm. 

lol.. anyone out there play fh2 and dc yet, please raise your hand.. .. .. .. yup.. noone.

also, a "better" game is purely subjective, so of course you would already think fh2 is a better game as you've already deemed it before release. 

Playground has only released 1 game ever.. Forza Horizon.  sure it got good praise, but that has no bearing on how this next iteration could play out.  could very suck for all we know at this point.  Evolution studios has had a decent track record since 2001 and are known for making good racing games.  seems you could take a cue yourself in your last sentence..

*sigh* right, let me explain this simply (for the 4th time this month ;_;)

Let's use Ryse and Infamous as examples. According to the open world vs linear narrative, Ryse must surely beat out infamous in every respect, no? It does after all only need to render small enclosed areas. There is no way infamous could have better lighting, more advanced particle and physics engines and higher poly characters. That would contradict the circle jerk.

Yet it does. Why? Because infamous being open world is mostly irrelevant. People would be correct in saying that open world games are forced to simplify certain things (such a local geometry, which looks better in Ryse), but those resources don't simply disappear. They can be applied to different things. Likewise, linear games generally have no need for a medium range LOD, which allows them to utilized a HLOD view (which Ryse also does, and very well).

All in all, despite the opposite world designs i consider Ryse and Infamous graphical equals. They are both limited in some respects by their design, but likewise both have advantages because of it.

If the only major reason people can give for an open world game looking almost universally worse than a linear game is its "accessible render distance" then said game is not pushing the hardware enough or the developer lacks the man power to achieve the same results as their competition. It's as simple as that.

DC's render distance is worthy of praise because it is on a very short list of games that utilize a full world render despite it generally being an area linear games can't properly utilize in conjunction with HLOD local geometry (Crysis 3 definitely did it best, but as far as consoles go DC is the best example).

If you still don't understand its relevance after reading this, then we shall simply have to agree to disagree. I can't be bothered with a full argument