I'm not sure if this already exists
There should be rendering layers or groups, that you can flag your game objects in GED/WED. Then you could control larger part of your scene. You could hide a section, without accessing each one, until an action enables them, you could assign post process shader, such as bloom to one section, and SSAO to other. Also you could determine which are indoor and which are outdoor stages (helping out weather effects)... The list goes on.
If such feature already exists, I'm eager to learn it, as I really would like not to constantly use invisible portals when creating environments and limiting passages, etc.