I hear birds singing, but where are they?

[Mack]

Just because the PS3 could potentially be unable to handle environmental effects doesn't mean the PC users can't have 'em.
As much as I hate to pull the FFXI card, well... FFXI had varying levels of environmental effects in the settings.
PS2 was set to either off or low and couldn't be changed whereas the PC had settings for off, normal and smooth in the config program. Pretty sure 360 was set to normal.

Well considering birds, waves, ships and player built settlements are hardly considered environmental effects, you can see why they would have to leave those aside.