As well as the one on the left, two more now rise over the central rock formation. Maybe they did exist before, but we can't know that, and it still means the new shot is drawing extra geometry.

as they should? This is standard for most games. You know, they got time to work on improvements from the past build. I don't see how this is a big thing. It's a shame that character models take a hit. The models looks late PS2 to early PS3/360. Given how big the game is suppose to be, I guess it was inevitable.

All aboard the overused hype train!

It's only a big thing because so many games these days go the opposite way and look worse as time goes on.

Maraccuda said:

The most impressive change for me is that they removed the distance fog on the water in the 2nd picture. Unless that the fog is a environmental variable feature and not just cheaply saving processing power.

It's not really that common an occurrence, it's more that the titles in question were very high profile. The overwhelming majority final builds look equal to or better than their initial gameplay reveal.

It happens an awful lot more often than it should (which would be never), but on the whole i think it's a much smaller issue than many make it out to be. Now if we swapped out "graphics downgrade" for "doesn't live to to the hype", that's a common issue :p

The one more towards the center looks more like a giant boulder than a new modeled area ...

Even if that's the case, they're still chunks of geometry (and texturing/shading/etc) that's weren't there before.

Patience, Curl ...  

There are always tricks that developers can use such as replacing it with a billboard when the time comes necessary to load that nearest asset 

That's kind of what I meant; it shouldn't happen at all, so its current frequency is enough to qualify as "many" to me.