I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to tell you.
It is expected and acceptable, to me, to have a lower level of details if your scale and scope is very large. It is not acceptable though to be confined and have low detail though. Its one or the other. Lair and Gundam of very are scope (and now that I've been shown) as does many parts of Heavenly Sword. Therefore a lower level of details is accepted. Its very easy.
You really should stop putting words in my mouth. I never said I "had" to start nit picking after 5 minutes. It is instead a natural habit that I have, after a few minutes of playing I'll start noticing things that bother me. This does not ruin the game, it simply stands out.
I do not have even start to nit pick of things I do not like about Heavenly Swords visual style but now that I've seen the scope of Heavenly Sword its textures and model detail are much more fitting and much more in place with what I'd expect and would enjoy.
If the detail shown in the arena does carry over to the very large scale battles then I'd certainly be confindent in saying that HS is one of the best looking and impressively graphics wise games I've seen.
I think you are making some mistakes with your comparissons
Games dont differ in visual quality based on the "scope" only. They also differ for other reasons. like gameplay, animation, the style and genre of the game etc.
For example both Shadow of Colossus and Jak have massive areas to explore, and huge view distances.
Yet they differ in animation, framerate,AI, polygon counts,textures, lighting and physics.
I can pick out things I like/dislike in Shadow of Colossus not present in Jak or pick out things I like/dislike in Jack not present in Shadow of Colossus.
I agree that games with larger areas are more excused for imperfections such as lower poly counts, textures etc but I dont think Heavenly Sword lacks in general visual detail even if we suppose there are no massive areas. It has as it is more detail than Gundam, and most likely in other aspects such as AI,polygons, animation, physics as well as texture detail and lighting. Atleast thats how it looks to me. I dont think it falls to the category of unexcused visual flaws. Lets not forget other visual qualities this game has that are only noticable in motion.
In a footage I saw of this game she even threw a huge rocky mountain in that arena.
Because you have that bad habbit to nit pick a game it doesnt mean that game is visually flawed. As I said all games have certain imperfections. If that was a CGI render yes I would have agreed but its not.