I shall try to put in simple terms, what the deelio with PD0 seems to be:
The MTV unveiling had PD0 as center piece of the show, with a death match showdown with the B-Celebs. This version was running on Alpha (dual G5 with 9800XT or 800XT) Mac dev kits. The build for this demo had to run at playable frame rates for the purpose of the death match. Thus the "wall man" gen build, which had alot of complex shaders turned off to run acceptably on current PC cards @1280x720 with 2X AA. 1UP ran screen shots from this build as exclusives and then GAF went up in flames.
Here are the pics from this build
http://www.1up.com/media?id=1879119&type=lg
http://www.1up.com/media?id=1879118&type=lg
http://www.1up.com/media?id=1879117&type=lg
http://www.1up.com/media?id=1879116&type=lg
Then we have these new shots, with no vids, that some are calling renders. They are likely from new build that is aimed for the R500's capabilities with more complex shaders. Running this build on the alpha kits will result probably in single frame rate slide show, so it was not an option for the MTV special.
Here are the pics from this build
http://media.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/1095/771_0002.jpg
http://media.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/1095/771_0001.jpg
http://media.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/1095/771_0003.jpg
Now, according to the Rare guys interviewed in the the MTV special, they mention that the characters are going to have around 5000 polygons (50 players max in LIVE! multiplayer).
These chaps doesn't quite look 5000 polys to me, but
these chaps do. And I don't see anything in the new shots that look CG beyond realtime. It just looks like the older build is void of any good lighting and the new shots have good lighting. I think in November, we'll be playing multiplayer and single player PD0 that look like the second shot.