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Playing Starfield, and actually enjoying a good part of it, like the faction quests, side quests, radiant quests even, and the increased roleplaying potential, then seeing a huge backlash against it, made me replay Skyrim, Vanilla, in 2024. The results may shock you!
The TL;DR is that Skyirm only beats Starfield in world interactivity like NPC schedules, and the percentage of gameplay you interact with that's hand-crafted vs procedural.
Comparing the faction quests of, say, the Dark Brotherhood and Crimson Fleet, you must play the Dark Brotherhood as a psycho assassin, while for the CF, you can be a fed, a brutal pirate, or someone walking that line, with your own background added for flavor.
The quest design in Starfield also gives more options, as well!
This overall means that, IMO, Bethesda game design itself is kind of shit without mods.
World interactivity is one of the most important things in open world games. Starfield is just completely empty
And because many of the sites you find on a planet are just RNG, there's not much visual story-telling, either. Which is one the things they've always done pretty well until now. It's just a place to find loot with no actual context or story behind it, which makes the exploration little more than "oh hey, there's something here."
yeah i miss the lore and sense of world building i get in Fallout. every little note adds to the story and overall feel
I don't disagree. However, some of the absolute worst aspects of Bethesda games, like roleplaying mechanics, quest design, and more were actually improved in Starfield. BG3 still smokes it, same with New Vegas, but it's also much better than Skyrim with those respects.
That's why it's interesting.