Anyway, the point is, with CryEngine you don't have to sacrifice as much graphical effects because the textures and geometry are loaded in dynamically in a certain radius around the character, i.e., "seamless world streaming". SE hasn't been able to create a really seamless world with the Crystal tools engine and has had to sacrifice certain features (water, apaprently). Instead of a seamless world, they just created a bunch of huge zones with repeated doodads to give the effect of huge seamless areas.

And if the water was a sacrifice they needed to make for large zones, then why in cutscenes and on the boat between continents, is that sacrifice still made unless the engine simply fails?