Heh I dont think it will add much to the game's visuals. I mean...looking at the game in motion it looks so good already in its entirety. These are so insignificant that I think the addition of a "better lod system" or more normal mapped textures will be there only to reduce the critic's chances of finding any more excuses to complain about since they are ridiculously trying too hard.
I think the LOD system is working smoothly and efficiently. Usually games such as Gears or other games with a heavy LoD system, didnt always have a smooth transition in detail. In many cases the models and environments seem to pop their geometry detail too suddenly or delay it. In some other occasions you could notice the reduction of texture and geometry detail in objects as they moved farther. You almost felt that you could count their level of detail transitions.
In Killzone the transition seemed very constant and smooth from what I ve seen. I think that the flat surfaces or low poly objects in some environments are the final detailed models, in certain areas, you have to get too close to these surfaces to notice and not a problem of the LoD system.
I think that Guerilla took a reverse approach of their LoD which I think is a very smart trick. Instead of reducing brutally the level of detail on objects that are far, they balanced things by not overdoing it with the detail that is close to the player, so that the farther objects are getting they will maintain as much detail as possible to the original with as less LoD transitions as possible. The more objects are getting farther the less you notice things such as blurred textures and the more detailed they look.
Thats probably why medium and long distant objects look more detailed than close objects.
I think that the character models though maintain a high level of polygon detail even close.
