I'm not seeing that myself. The new one has more geometry, better lighting effects, better textures, and smoother rounds. It's an all around improvement.
Seeing them side by side and zoomed in, the PS4 version does look better. I'd probably be singing a different tune if it was a 1080p raw capture where we could really see the details.
From a distance though/at that res, I definitely prefer that texture on the PS3 model. It just looks artistically more striking and adds a level of detail to the entire image that is just missing on the more subtle PS4 version (not that it is actually missing, it's just not as noticeable). Plus other artistic decisions, like the more square looking hood give the PS4 model the impression of lower poly count even if it's not actually the case. Curves = great.
I'd bet that to the every day gamer, they wouldn't see a huge difference between the two.
NPCs are something that people around the internet have been making fun of for a while now. The game looks excellent, but if you distill it down to its individual elements, you can see that it's still very much a game. We're not reaching diminishing returns; PS3 gen was just such a triumph in realism.