As explained by Denis in this topic, it's not a picture from SS08 and as such nothing was 'cut back'.
And to be honest, looking at that picture, I see less, not more detail. It's got some features that our sherpa has not got, but ours is more detailed, just look at the wheelhouse for example.
The SS08 graphics are fine the way they are and nothing is held back unless it means that it would make the game much too heavy for the average user. The tools are perfect, as they use basically the same ones that others do, like 3DSMAX.
Plus, none of the 'big boys' tools have to cut back on things, they can produce top notch models, but pc specs have to be taken into account. I've seen a lot of pre-release stuff from other game developers aswell, and initially things are usually 'heavier' than what ends up in the release. Or else they would miss out on a lot of customers.
And what high graphic games do you mean? You can't just compare this one on one with say, first person shooters that have a very limited enviroment, which leaves more room for detail. So you can't take Rainbow six as an example, and Deadliest catch doesn't look THAT good, I run it on full graphics and SS08 looks much better.
Fred