Wait, you think I’m defending them?

Making statements about why shitty games are not the fault of old technology is not a defense of said shitty games.

They always make the same game, they ship it broken and keep it broken. The best game in their franchises since at least since Morrowind was made by another studio. The lore is derivative and as deep as a puddle. They sell their games based on bullet points and features and not quality.

I don’t like their recent output at all. I find their design philosophy and quest design outdated and lacking, recent games feel older that previous ones.

But none of those things are the engine’s fault. They ship exactly the game they want to ship, and use the engine that lets them do it as efficiently as possible. If they are limited at all is in their production organization or lack thereof.

Are you denying that Skyrim, Fallour 3 and 4, or Starfield are commercial successes? Even Starfield was a critically acclaimed game for a while.

Most people are okay without mods because they can’t install them in their platform of choice so they don’t expect them. They have heard about them in articles and videos and find them an oddity of PC gaming, at most.

It is really easy to fall into an echo chamber and believing most of the people that buys Bethesda games are fixing them with mods. That’s an option only for a minority of players, and of those many won’t install them. They play 30~60 hours and won’t launch the game ever again.