It's kind of stunning that a game of this magnitude is able to go out the door without model LOD.

I suppose the fact that it runs at all is stunning -- surely you could not get away with this a decade or two ago -- but perhaps it speaks to the incredible capabilities of modern hardware. This feels a bit similar to the Electron criticism, where convenience ultimately trumps performance, and users ultimately don't care. I wonder how this will play out in the long run.

Bizarre and at least for me, equally sad. I long for the days of a tuned, polished game engine squeezing every inch of performance out of your PC.