Ryse original characters were 150k before optimisation. That's probably the highest it needs to go on hero assets, all depends on engine and type of game really, but can literally be anything from 20-150k.
I think next gen needs new engines for better polycounts. Right now, they seem to be capped to 40,000 polygons characters no matter what. Of course, some games go higher than that (Ryse has a 80,000 poly character). If that doesn't work, tessellation is probably the only way to go but I'm not sure if that will get drained…