My thoughts exactly. Whatever issues were in Morrowind, Oblivion, New Vegas, Skyrim etc there was still a uniquely engaging game there.
I’ve been poking around and their lead concept artist died before he got to work on Fo4, and the two main writer producer guys Emil & Pete(?) have basically admitted on game dev talks that they’re no longer trying to tell a coherent story or create a world anymore, just keep a player playing. Maybe this is why?
Probably not so much COVID and instead trying to coordinate 27 different outsourced studios. Why not just make it mostly inhouse like before??? If we’re talking scale issues; why introduce these by aiming for deluge of samey procedurally generated worlds instead of the one quality handmade world you’re already known for?