Yeah, the beach is probably the most improved part of the game aside from the character models, and if what you say about it circling your island, that just takes the cake for me, that means the beach is going to be huge.
I'm interested in how rivers flow into the ocean with the cliffs though, are they all just waterfalls or will there be different options like in all the previous games.
It's been a while but someone mentioned being able to have a bonfire on the beach. Not sure if that was an older version that's been scrapped or not, but it sounds like a cool idea.