Shit you got me, thought I could trick you into thinking its not blueberry flavouered jello.
Anyways, yea Crysis 3 is pretty much a linear game, it still has some wide-open levels though. And if you compare the graphics of Crysis 3 with all these badass effects like tessellation, PADM, water caustics and so on Witcher 3 just cant stand against it. If I have 30 fps at Ultra Crysis 3 settings, I shouldve something like 50 in Witcher 3. I dont think the open-world scenario makes up for no difference in fps but at the same time much worse graphics.
regarding optimization in crysis 3 , yeah it is really good. i get 30-40 in ultra/high with 2x smaa
regarding W3 everything is dynamic , nothing is prebaked. From what i have seen through my playthrough ingame AA is inadequate,environmental textures need improvement (some are good , some are bad).More strain is placed on the GPU to render everything in a larger space compared to a dingy corridor in others.The closest an (semi) open world game has come towards corridor games is AC unity.( it uses baked textures , basic GI and what-not)
if they actually implemented the same level of detail as Crysis 3 lvls in witcher , i am pretty sure most cards would not be able to handle it
Heck even a titan x sli was brought sown to its knees playing tweaked witcher 3 in 4k. Mostly 4k would be achievable wit pascal in 2016 / when HBM is released in mid and high tier AMD GPUS instead of the enthusiast class
Anyway , yeah tesselation is lacking in w3 and mild/moderate tess with dx11 and maxwell woud pose little problems/performance downgrade. However i think in the wilderness it wouldnt be that noticeable as it would be in cities
PS- Each time i look at the water , i feel like taking a fork , poking it and devouring the sweet blueberry jello