Well, fair enough. If that's what's behind the curtain, it will be exposed as such, but as of right now, I see a most intriguing game with lots of interesting possibilities that I've never had in other games before. I don't know if it's due to the expectations of how powerful the new consoles would be, and this is why we're overlooking what this game is trying to do, but what if Watch Dogs, instead of being from Ubisoft, was just some epic indie title? I really do wonder if the reactions here would be the same.
One of the most noted PR tactic AAA publishers like to use is present a core gameplay "feature" then enact it in it's best possible light in order to create buzz to fill their own hype-bubble. Which is pretty standard as you want to need to rack up enough hype to justify the expenses on the project.
Where the problem lies, is that when updates upon updates that barely extrapolates on said feature; reducing it to a mere backdrop wrapped by the menagerie of blockbuster tropes that take popular cues from pop culture that is applicable to their game. That is the main reason why so many are complaining about discrepancy between the the reveal and the final promo material (IMO). It is as if Ubisoft is presenting 2 very different games hoping the recent PR would serve to alleviate any concerns about it's presentation. As you can see, this tactic clearly backfired as consumers today are far more wary that gives precedence to cynicism. Nevermind the downgrades on graphics which they PR placed themselves on.
Is it because it's one of the mega publishers that we're not taking the time to appreciate what may possibly be a game that's doing some genuinely different things from what we've come to expect over the years from action adventure open world titles? What if the game were 1080p and 60fps on both machines, but they failed miserably on their vision and it isn't even close to delivering on the "connected world, hack anything" vision they promised? Would we be hailing Ubisoft and the dev team right now for their incredible work? The game may or may not not deliver, but I gladly give them the benefit of the doubt until I see otherwise. Judging them on their work based on native rendering resolutions is a bit too crazy for me. I think I even saw mentions of Ryse being 900p, so there's no reason for this game to not be much higher, totally ignoring just how unbelievably different the two games are.
I can see where your enthusiasm lies at this game. Until we get the final product, we are unsure of their delivery and quality. As for the 1080p/60fps issue, your concerns may be correct if it was just a simple design choice. But it isn't. It's a cross-gen issue. Their "vision", no matter how ambitious, must fit to the design which the platform is based on - in this case - the "last" gen consoles. This means, any so-called feature that
could-have-been is completely nullified since the current-gen consoles (like the PC) are merely up-ports. So if you want to know where all potential for this game could be lost, it would not be in the focus of the resolution or frame-rate this gen...
it would be simply based on how capable the 360/PS3 is. Which means, you'll be judging the game based on that criteria and any faults you may find can only be concluded as such.