I feel that they got away with it much easier in AE than AO. AO had a much smaller set of locations, and you get quite intimate with them, so you notice the repeating background. In AE you don't spend much time in each location, so repeating backgrounds aren't quite as obvious because you don't know the locations.
At the end of the day, game developers are CONSTANTLY re-using stuff. Valve is one of my favorites for this - Did you know that the 'zombies are coming' scream sound in Left 4 Dead was actually in Half-Life, but went unused? Nearly all of the materials used in Portal are slightly-edited from Half-Life 2, and one of the new maps in Counter Strike GO is nearly entirely made up of copied Left 4 Dead 2 geometry... yeah, they are lazy. But then again, why waste the effort when the average consumer won't notice?
Also, kinda side note here, but I like how in AE they cut off the bottom and the top of the screen. Not only does it make it look more cinematic, it probably reduced rendering time for all of those cams :3
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