It would be fair to say that the C++ code reflected the state of the 2005 Unreal engine. When I look at the capabilities of Unreal today the numbers of programmers could well go down for an isometric or closed world games but go through the roof for procedural Open Worlds or ones with AI driven NPCs and opponents.
I’m also not so sure that C++ should be the language of choice for game development. Imo C++ suffers from bloat and overhead slowdown when it comes to handling exceptions, and C would be a better choice. I fully accept that C++ handles reusable code and documentation a lot better and is almost universally used for Game Engine Development, but only a masochist would start game development by writing their own game engine!
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