This is advanced CEO brain. He read the same reviews as everyone else did, but he has to conclude that he should play it safer with the company's money, which means we'll probably be getting another Skyrim port or two before TES VI.
The lovingly crafted story|-------------------------|infinite steamed hams ratchet only goes one way.
If a game using more procedurally generated content does well, the ratchet is cranked and the next game has even more busy work. If it bombs, we get a rerelease of the last game a.
If they had just made Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6 I'm pretty sure the game wouldn't have gotten nearly as much backlash even if it sucked just as bad because people would have been more forgiving of an existing IP due to feeling loyalty to that series
Everyone ignored how deeply flawed Bethesda games were for years up until this and I don't see too many waking up to how they've always kinda sucked
That's not to say Skyrim and Fallout 3 aren't fun but the base gameplay has never been great
narratively New Vegas is so much better, the mojave is much better, but just wandering place to place fallout 3 is better imo. hard to say with nostalgia, fo3 was my first fallout, and one of my first games/ special interests so I'm very biased