The videos released 2-3 years ago were PoCs, animation & environment examples of what SBS hoped to create. The videos released recently are actual works-in-progress recorded with the Prelyra client, which uses low-poly-count assets so that the programmers don't need to wait for the artists to create all the graphic assets required.

When the artists have made enough progress, they'll swap out the 'ugly' low-poly graphics with the top-notch high-poly&texture versions :).