Another great point of AAA engines is optimisation :

Coded optimisation, optimisation of scene displaying by the engine etc ...lot of code tricks by veteran coders sometimes
And also optimisation of what meshes are affected by nearest lights, and tools to measure that also.

Some game engine like the one of Naughty Dogs(Uncharted 2 on PS3), is an oustanding amount of optimisations on code to allow such amount of polygons/effects/shaders on screen.

A7, T3D won't display as big scenes as some AAA engines with same detailled characters having more than 5000 polys.

Well ...

Never heard of that game "Lived" ??
Is it a thread ? is it an abandonned game ?