I'm sorry but you are not gonna convince me that many aspects of a game are free in the rendering budget just because remedy say so.
Number of npcs, number of enemies, how elaborate is their ia, physics, interaction with the scenario and many other things need to be considered when you make a game from nothing.
Days gone biggest selling point were the hordes, the game was made around a ps4 being capable of rendering 500 zombies without letting the framerate go into single digit, they designed the game around 30 fps, if it was at 60, the hordes would be have been smaller.
Remedy always do small ass games, not open worlds, so maybe in their case is simpler, but with games with a lot of shit going on at any given moment, you can't just ignore that stuff and think about the framerate like it's the last thing.