First video was fantastic. Second one was really bad and only got it on a few points (mostly the fox princess compaired to the female cat). Truthfuly it's not shocking tho. I bet if you compaired games from a company you will notice that a lot of things animate or look simular to a previous game from that same company.
Now that you mention it, Free Radical games sometimes have that effect on me. Sorta like I somewhat expect Haze to "Feel" like Goldeneye a little.
I don't get how they can get cheaper cost by reusing the same "spirit"... Maybe in creativity? ^^ Because, everything need to be re-drawed anyway ^^. That's enormous, I would rather take this as a "code"! Great!
In animation you would often times have to redraw frames because when animated it would look maybe floaty for example or just not fluid, with the main part done, it cuts that down to near nothing.