No, Escrow is just the resident pessimist/hater :-/
This time he is 100% correct. Not to take away from TW3, as it's likely going to be an epic open world RPG, but from a technical perspective, it was 100% downgraded. Did you not see the awful fire effects completely lacking smoke?
Dualshockers interview:
G: While many focus a lot on pixel and polygon count, lighting is possibly the most important element in making a game look great. Could you give us some details about the lighting solutions and tech used in The Witcher 3? How much of it is dynamic, and how much is baked?
"We ended up not using Global Illumination, light bouncing and reflecting… this is similar to what I mentioned previously with visual effects, an area where things keep getting better every year, but these really cool solutions are still far too expensive to use in a complex game. So to add more detail to the lighting, the whole world is covered in “lighting and reflection” probes, that analyze the surrounding area and light it accordingly. It does a pretty good job."
G: Draw distance is another element that contributes to make a open world really feel “open.” Just how far can we see in The Witcher 3? Does it vary with different weather conditions? Is it the same on all platforms, or is it different?
"JT: As far as I know the draw distances are the same in every platform. Now of course it gets more complicated because it’s greatly affected by fog, and all those things, but in the more clear weather conditions, the visibility distance is pretty impressive!"
^ Now we know the developer stated before that the draw distance is far better on the PC but let's take their words for it since many developers misrepresent facts.
Very recent gameplay video on a 980 with Ultra settings on the PC. Forward to 4 min 40 second mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cgCNtO78IQ
^ There is a lot of visible shadow and object pop in in the PC version from every YouTube video I've seen and other gamers have noted this too. I would have liked to see the PC version to have greater draw distance because PC hardware is always evolving. There should be no reason for draw distance pop in for such primitive objects as trees and shadows on the PC.
But then there are obvious details that are hard to overlook.
BONUS
https://youtu.be/N4ony2r0QFs?t=8m44s
Blood on water, great water effects, brutal combat that felt heavy
https://youtu.be/KrXxdy9Qgpk?t=3m25s
No more blood on water and ground, blood toned down heavily, combat feels light
Source
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It's clear the graphics tone/style has changed from 2013-2014 to today. The game looks like artistic but less realistic. Again, that's not to say it won't be an amazing game but removal of global illumination entirely and massive downgrades in textures/tessellation seem evident to me.