An issue is that Bethesda might be getting deluded into thinking that Fallout 4 on its own was fantastic.

It is, on its own, very boring. The story is bland, characters left unexplored. But the mods make it amazing.
Sim settlements alone revitalizes the game, changing settlement building into an optional and story driven thing, particularly in its version 2.
The vertibirds mods which not only fix the abysmal default abilities, but even let you call one in as air support.
Various mods that add travellers on the roads and paths, so you encounter other people.
The mods that let you turn the feral ghouls into zombie hordes.
The list goes on.

but No Man's Sky absolutely smashes Starfield in this department

I had high hopes for No Man's Sky based on how people talked about it but was left underwhelmed. I found it boring and repetitive.

Starfield took a lot longer before it started feeling that repetitive (to me.) I put many more hours into Starfield (than NMS) without even thinking about it.

I just rolled credits on Starfield last night and went back to keep playing because I have a ton of unfinished quests and some goals for building my spaceship. With No Man's Sky I felt like there was nothing else to find.

(All that said, I do find a lot of the writing pretty lackluster, the planets now feel boring to look at and now predictable as to what will be there, and I do not particularly enjoy running around trying to find the last things to scan for very little payoff.)

I got my monies worth out of it, but yeah, it's missing the mark compared to their previous games.

I don't blame the engine. There are other studios out there with custom engines that evolved over time. Also Creation Engine evolved a lot.

That they work with many connected scenes instead of a continuous world also has advantages ... it allows them to easily change the "world" between scenes by simply linking you "back" to a different scene (for example city under siege which before the dialog was not under siege). It's how they work. They could do the same shit with Unreal if they wanted to and if they believe this kind of game design is the only feasible for their story telling, they would shove it into another engine as well.

I also don't think the game feels "old". I do think it feels like it is conceptionally unfinished. They had many ideas and you can see a lot of different systems in the game (space fights, planets with different biomes, ship building, base building, and so on and so forth). Each of these systems in itself has some kind of concept, but all these systems together are missing a clear concept, IMO.

From what I know, game dev typically works in modules that get thrown together. And this also seems to be the case here. However the "big picture" wasn't refined or they realized that it needs a ton of small adjustments all over the place (conceptionally AND technically) to make sense of it and it looks like they were not able to deal with the complexity of that.

As a result we have a game that is okayish. It tells some stories, and offers a lot of content, but it feels not nearly as stunning as it should have and it's not on a single front ground breaking.

The main thing I want from ES6 is the same level of modability as Skyrim. I'd love for it to be as stable as Starfield.

I didn't think the need to dump creation to make a great game, they just need to stop trying to polish the rust. Some aspects of Creation aren't amazing but the staying power of Bethesda games has been about modding a compelling world in a well supported way. They need to ensure that whatever they do that they don't lose that.

I think Starfield has a lot going for it but I don't find the world compelling enough to want to spend time in the way I did Skyrim. I enjoyed the time I did spend but I don't see that itch coming back. Starfield made me want to play a space game with magic, but I've I got it's magic unlocked I didn't feel that desire was fulfilled.

The best part of creation is its sandbox-ibility and open world functionality.

It's the very thing unreal engine is completely horrible at.

I totally agree. However, when looking at the bigger picture I think Microsoft wouldn't want to be so dependend on Epic after spending so much money on their game service, Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard. I don't expect them to actively consider switching engines and I don't think it would solve all that many problems anyway.

It just works.

This doesn't strike me as a bad move on their part.

It reeks of desperation.

I would agreeish, but from a different perspective. However,

"consider the amount of data needed to load procedural assets in under 3 seconds" is a laughable response considering the very real criticism of having so many god damn menus, all of which revolve around picking things on a map.

They have the tools to make the game however they want. I find it pretty insane that there's no consistency in how the game allows you to fast travel in space - sometimes you can select a solar system/planet and travel right from there, no map required. Other times you get to a planet and then you can't land on the planet until you open the map and "fast travel" to it, even though you're right there.

And the response says "consider" no, no I won't consider something you should have optimized before release lmao. It is how it is now and that's what I'm considering, and I've decided that it's got potential and in it's current state it sucks.

And I actually liked the game. I did not like NG+ whatsoever though. Disappointing

(according to Xbox achievements I’m one of only 6% to bother reaching level 50)

When everyone gets to try it for free via Gamepass, you're going to get very different statistics than when everyone has to shell out the money for the game and fight through the shit gameplay thanks to sunk cost fallacy.

Not trying to get up your hopes. That would just be cruel of me.

But TES is still their flagship IP. It's likely to get a more "cautious" treatment than both Starfield and Fallout.

Starfield was Bethesdas version of "ambitious". And Fallout is just a testing grounds for whatever is trending.