Gaming

I agree with everything you said. Though that's certainly not everything, that's a lot of the major issues that hold Bethesda games back from their potential.

I am actually glad that with Starfield radiant quests have been expanded to dynamically place quests in different locations. I think that, if it's taken advantage of, will go a long way towards the potential criticism of "1,000 planets and nothing to do on most of them" that I see as a possible issue with their scope.

Bethesda continually evolves and changes their radiant system with each release, but from Skyrim to Fallout 4 we saw the felt effects of that system stagnate and become padding instead of adding dynamic experiences as its original intent.

And since I didn't specifically mention the bugs in my other comments, Ive played plenty of non-bethesda open world games with plenty of bugs long after release, I feel they're a part of the whole deal and I excuse most of them unless they truly cant be worked around (things like losing your companions or getting stuck on geometry if you're a console player). I cease to excuse those bugs as soon as the gameplay requires things of you that the bugs prevent, such as the game being too janky to support the strict save system of vanilla FO4's survival mode, which is inexcusable.

I also worry, though, about mods. Because of how many players use mods extensively in Bethesda games it becomes tricky to know which bugs are inherent, which are from poorly made mods, and which are from conflicting mods. It muddies the waters of really pinning down what's going on. Just something that contributes to the bugginess of those games in a way that isn't very calculable, unless you're unmodded on console.

But if anything remotely as problematic as the survival mode stability is a factor in Starfield, I'd be much much less willing to forgive some bugs here and there. We'll just have to see.