> It wasn’t until they ported about 70% of Skyrim Together’s revered code to the Starfield project, though, that they bumped into a problem: “This game is fucking trash.” > “I didn't realize this until after I actually started playing the damn game a week after launch,” they say. “The game is boring, bland, and the main draw of Bethesda games, exploration in a lively and handcrafted world, was completely gone. The modder started working on it before playing the game. It's kind of funny in a way, but also cool that they wanted to give people multiplayer ASAP.

Thing is Skyrim wasn't particularly handcrafted or lively either, the models for things like dungeons were repeated all the time and the NPC liveliness was lacklustre compared to eurojank games like Gothic.

Fallout New Vegas was also repetitive in many aspects, mainly because they had limited time and resued assets when they could. Still doesn't mean it's not a fantastic game

Oh I agree, the sum of it all still equals great games that we talk about decades later. That must be the biggest kind of praise there is!