The thing about the engine is it’s just not what needs to be focused on, though I see it in every conversation. Unreal Engine 5, the one everyone fawns over, is the same engine Epic has been using and licensing out since 1998, just upgraded and overhauled. Gamebryo/creation engine could be upgraded to be fine, passable, good even, and in some respects, some specific features, it has. From Skyrim to FO4, SSE, FO76, and now Starfield, it’s certainly not exactly how it was in Morrowind, Oblivion or FO3 any more.

The actual issue is Bethesda. They don’t want to put the time into making it not duct taped together. If they have employees skilled enough to do so, Todd and the higher ups do not give them the command to. They only want whatever tiny hacky changes will fit each employee’s current goal. The company has not used a design document to make any of their games since Oblivion, or at best Fallout 3, and Emil Pagliurulo (fuck spelling his name) has openly admitted this a few times. No design document, no plan.

In fact, going past the engine issue into actual game design, Emil seems to just bounce ideas off Todd, like “what if this whole settlement and faction on this planet was wild west themed, they can have a police force called the Rangers”. And non-writer developers designing certain features or locations get to write entire quests by themselves without direction or oversight as long as Emil or Todd give a thumbs up. If they even get a chance to ask. In case they get no answer, best to play it safe with their quest or feature and not bother hooking it into any other sequence of the game, keep it totally optional, just in case Emil or Todd finally get back to them and tell them “no I don’t like this, take it all out”.

Bethesda is a big company that has deluded themselves into thinking they can keep winging it like they did with all of their other games since the late 90s and early 00s, when they really were small, and so was the rest of the industry. But they can’t, and all they’ve been doing for a decade is coasting off previous success and name brand. It’s just a matter of waiting for the general public to fully catch on to how little thought or care they put into their games any more (or, possibly ever, and the past was just a fluke all along). It was easier for people to see the cracks in a new IP, but starfield still sold well. We’ll see if their situation declines any further once they release TES6 in 8 years.