Ahhh, the village scene gif.....it's been awhile
I think some of the differences people are calling a downgrade are due to preference of colour\saturation and a touch of sharpness. Those, for people using a pc, will be changeable thanks to SweetFx. In fact I've just been messing about with a couple of screenshots from the higher quality footage of 'Precious Cargo' and adding sharpening. It does make things 'pop out'.
However, the views in the distance (things like lakes, mountains, buildings way off in on the horizon) definitely don't seem the same. Taking a guess, I don't think it's down to weather conditions like fog either. Smoke from the chimneys? Might make it into final build, might not.
You never know though, the gif with spinning boy might be possible on 4k with ubersampling, though I'm not sure how those settings would change draw distance if the assets aren't packaged with the game. That's a bit beyond my tech knowledge so to speak.
Having said that, I'm still impressed and we already know it takes a 980 to run at 60fps (in fact I think Gopher mentioned it dropping ever so slightly now and then iirc) so how many people could play at VGX settings, even at 30fps? That again is beyond my expertise. Would it be nice to know that VGX quality is available for use in a few years time? Sure, as long as it didn't effect the progress on the game up to going gold. Crysis and Eilte Dangerous did it after all.
All in all though, I don't think CDPR willfully misled anyone and I'm still really hyped.