Some bits absolutely can benefit from thowing bodies at them though. Animation is one of the key areas for that: if you want to give thousands of models hundreds of unique animations you absolutely can split that up by having 100 animators do 10 each rather than 10 doing 100 each.

The increase in desire for graphical fidelity and custom naturalistic animation is a huge driver of the balloning teams and budgets for the AA and AAA games.