In the original ROTTR video John says "we regularly encounter performance drops" and shows several scenes dropping to 25 fps or lower but this seems to be glossed over here for the OG Xbox One.
Weird how he doesn't mention it and it would be an interesting comparison to see if PS4 and Xbox One S drops to 23-25 fps in these areas shown here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrUowFjsBwM
John also says if you stay in cover the frame stays around 30 but engage in the enemies head on you get drops to around 25fps.
moreover they shows dips to 23-25fps without any enemies on screen
Was this patched out, seems odd to not mention now and give the impression its a solid 30fps game with only mentions of some torn frames like the OP has done as well.
While I'm sure some folks like to throw around BS conspiracy theories as usual (not you), I can explain the reason.
That scene in the Xbox One version happens a ways into the game. I played just shy of halfway through the PS4 version before I had no choice but to stop in order to hit the deadline. I literally only had about a day to do this video from scratch. I played the heck out of the PS4 version but I just couldn't get to that combat scene in time. That's all.
I'm going to check on it today.
...and the discovery of Xbox One S running better was an accident. I used that system for capture because I specifically knew that the valley exhibited screen tearing on Xbox One...but it was fine in the capture. It took me a couple of hours before it finally dawned on my why so I had to re-write the script and re-record it before pulling out the original XO for testing. So, yeah, that was an annoyance.
I did load up that combat scene on the S because I did want to include it and it does run much better. Once I get there on PS4, I'll update you.
Unfortunately, I don't control time so I did the best I could within the time constraints. For comparison, when covering the game on Xbox One originally, I had a full two weeks with the game. For the PS4 version of ROTTR, I received it and downloaded it Tuesday night. So, yeah, 24 hours with it. Thankfully, I've played the game SO much now that I was able to make it to the valley by staying up super late on Tuesday into Wed.