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Noticed recently that people are producing real models of crates, boxes, houses etc.
As the world itself is made up of mostly boxes would it not be a better idea to simply produce these items as boxes i.e. 6 polygons.
Use of transparency allows everything from fences to damaged walls to even shops or empty houses to be produced as a box.
Granted war ruins you intend to walk through need a bit more than 6 polygons but detailed models for general scenery even using LOD seems a waste of polygons and engine speed!
Better to create a massive environment with detailed fighting spaces within it and conserve the saved speed for characters, ai and particle effects.
Surely a well paced game would prevent you from investigating the quality of the environment anyway?
Here's a few screenshots of my own 'fall out city' WIP game where the houses and shops and even the fences, in fact everything is boxes.

definitly for low poly, and, your screen shots look great.
One thing I've got some info from is browsing thru scenes on TurboSquid. I'm more interested in GTA style scenes, and it is amazing how detailed some of the scenes on TurboSquid are, and with incredibly low poly counts.
I study the snot out of the wireframes.
Also, alot of poly reduction going on. not everything is or needs to be evenly spaced grids.
You are definitly on the right track, in my opinion.

I wouldnt advise on using boxes for things like buildings. Sure, you can get a decent enough effect, but there is still a clear cut line between seeing a simple box with images slapped on each face, and a model that has those added extra details that pop it out. The sillouhette of an object is the first thing the human eye sees. Because of this, sillouhettes are extremely important in providing the "awe" factor. If all the user is seeing as a bunch of flat sillouhettes, they're going to notice, and not appreciate it nearly as much as something more complex. Yes, you want to save polygons for more important objects, but low poly modeling is an art form. You need to know when and where you must have those extra few polygons to bring the model to the next level. Using boxes for buildings just wont cut it. S

Yes your screenshots look good, but I wouldn't say great. Computers have improved tremendously in the last few years, to ignore the added benefits of being able to use those extra polygons in each model isn't going to help things. If you're a good modeler, then you know how to create interesting levels with minimal polygon counts while not going too low poly. This is the next-gen era, there is no reason to keep working as if we were making n64 games.

I got from the Medusa's post that he intends to have high detail in areas he plans to walk thru. In games like Gran Turismo and Forza, there are tons and tons of billboards in the distance, even whole buildings and mountains and such are just billboards.
I think just like Medusa suggested, if you are never going to get near them, don't waste the polygons or the time on them. A good texture and transparency and other tricks do just fine.

I agree with RUCCUS, time has changed. We can now enjoy higher polygon objects than they used to be.
Almost every engine is capable of rendering medium polygon objects.
Sure you dont want to waiste 200 polygons on a small object like a soda can.

And as for buildings, they dont use too much polygons. Since most of the time they are in fact just boxes. but you do however want to add details. Like windows, doors, edges...etc..etc

So you dont need a high polygon building, but you sure dont want a simple box with alpha maps dropped onto them.

Also Visigoth is right, if its just for using them as billboards.
Sure no problem.

so far we are all in aggreement!
minimum poly for distant scenery as in building surrounds etc
bit more poly for game area
more again for buildings and objects you are going to walk through or interact with.
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As for the principal that the more power you have on tap the more you can afford to throw away that leads to boxes and crates with thousands of polygons or a mesh fence made up of several thousand polygons instead of a six polygon transparency.
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You end up with a 100 mb version of pong instead of 64k
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The idea of game visuals is after all to render a realistic impression of a scene not to create an actual scene grain for grain which means that the overall impression you get is worth more than the individual detail