People really need to understand what an engine is before complaining about it.

counterpoint: if it isn't the engine holding them back, then everyone left is just fundamentally bad at designing games (i'm not counting "let's just copy what we designed last time" as design), and that's worse

then everyone left is just fundamentally bad at designing games

Obviously. The problem with Bethesda was never the damn engine, they’ve been consecutively dumbing down their games ever since Oblivion. The only anomaly was New Vegas made by Obsidian, which are actually competent at making RPGs and even with the dated FO3 engine at the time they managed to make one of the best games ever. The problem was never the engine, it’s their game design philosophy.

the average player doesn't care about crunchy rpg systems. they do care if the core gameplay would've been outdated in 2010.

bethesda doesn't seem to be able to improve the core gameplay because the engine can't cope.

even if you fixed the writing and tossed out the awful procedural generation in favor of hand-crafted environments, at it heart it's still going to play like a stripped down borderlands 1

Starfields core gameplay is actually leagues more refined then prior games on the same engine, feels really good to play, where it lacks heavily is story, which is historically how they made up the difference between the lackluster gameplay.

which is historically how they made up the difference between the lackluster gameplay

you and i must have been playing different bethesda games, because none of them have been particularly interesting