If the leaks are final, these fears have been realized.
The leaked gameplay footage looks extremely terrible, almost broken, and if that is what the final product looks like, I have officially lost interest in this remaster. The visuals look like those terrible saturated "enhanced graphics" mods and reshade presets you see for games, god awful contrast with washed out, flat looking textures and environmental detail.
Shaundi, who I initally thought looked good in the low resolution preview gif, looked atrocious, as did every other character model. Everyone's skin looks splotchy and revolting, seemingly attempting to add realistic details, but instead butchering the games artstyle. The hair in contrast looks completely plasticine and uncanny in the new lighting. The new facial models seem to animate terribly in cutscenes as well, with atrocious rigging. Certain characters look completely unrecognizable from their original appearance, but still use the same rigs, which looks absurdly bad.
Even though the original hasn't aged well, I still strongly prefer its stylized art style, I don't want to see a bunch of gross looking wrinkles whenever I see characters up close, and they don't look realistic either, in real life perception and lighting work very differently, but here no matter the distance the detailing looks the same. Games continue to over empathize skin detailing far beyond reality, I can't stand how it looks.
Agents of Mayhem looked far better in every facet, and not just because of its artstyle. I strongly hope that the new Saints Row looks better than this, or that the leaks are misleading.