Definitely, we're at a point where geometry isn't a key factor in rendering times - at least for a decently optimized game (I'm looking at you, Cities Skylines 2 and all your teeth).

Games are going ham with the lighting - ray tracing and all that jazz that help with photorealism.

There are workarounds that have been used for a long time to "mimic" these effects but with a big quality Vs speed trade-off. Since computational power is now so cheap (or used to, before ai...) they're removing those crutches and using techniques that give better results, but it's definitely marginal improvements.