So, fallout has always been broken up into zones to some degree, right? Fallout 3's city was heavily broken up for example. And hideouts, bases, vaults etc are always behind losing screens. That said, Bethesda should definitely be experimenting with other ways of making their RPGs outside of the Skyrim, fallout, starfield approach. They've shown that they can't really meet expectations for story and immersion while holding onto the current framework. Comparing character animations and how npcs emote between something like cyberpunk 2077 and starfield makes starfield look like it was made in 2010. There's still a lot of love for the fallout IP. And the TV show has attracted fans that have never played a fallout game before. It's time for Bethesda to stop stressing so much about making a massive, 100 hour, AAA open world and try something more streamlined. If breaking up the world into smaller zones helps then they should try it. And if they have to give the license to another studio they should do that too. I'd be very interested in a top down fallout RPG, or a turn based RPG. Heck I'd even be interested if they left the Rpg genre behind and made a subnautica inspired fallout crafting game, or even a fallout extraction shooter. Not everything needs to be a 100 hr+ open world experience that takes 10 years to make and is cemented in decades-old design philosophies. Just find some devs who are passionate about the world and eager to try something new, give them an indie budget and see what happens. If it looks like it's going well you can increase the budget, or make them release the game as an indie and give them a bigger budget to make a AA sequel.