I wonder if they ran out of vram here due to their native 4k budget which can have a big hit on vram. It was probably fine for last gen games like HFW, GOW, GT7, etc since they were built around 5GB vram consoles, but since this game is pushing bigger draw distances and likely a lot more geometry, they probably ran out of vram before maxing out the GPU. it will be interesting to see this game's PC version.
Otherwise, i agree it doesnt make much sense considering you are so close to the camera. HFW has decent lods close to the camera, they only begin to fail in the distance. this particular mountain to me is the best looking section in the game along with the fancy fireworks level giffed a few pages ago. But I did not realize the LODs were so slow. I wonder if this is another one of those last gen games that look better in gifs while these actual current gen games look worse because the rocks here look just fine. Distant mountains have low lods which makes sense, but at least its better than HFW which used fog to mask everything.
Honestly, that fireworks gif made me kinda happy. it looks absolutely amazing with lots of dynamic lighting effects, great reflections and volumetric effects that i typically only see in games with either rt or software GI. Maybe we are all wrong about this and they have added some kind of RT effect that doesnt show off well in youtube videos. RTGI also comes alive in indirectly lit areas and this game seems to be mostly set in daytime in barren areas lit by a single light source. The fireworks gif was the first time we've seen the gameplay lit by dynamic light sources and it looks stunning. We already know the cutscenes look next gen thanks to the fantastic hero lighting.