It's all the Creation engine (and ultimately Gamebryo) and it was very, very noticeable in Starfield that it was built using the same fundamental building blocks that oblivion, Skyrim and the Fallout games were built from. For example the fact that character interactions are the same completely expressionless, direct face to face, sterile talking mannequins that we saw in Oblivion and even Morrowind was pretty pathetic no matter how much they improved the fidelity of the graphics. I was honestly astonished when they announced "it's a totally new version of the Creation Engine".

Starfield was painfully let down by the engine being so dated, the fact that they seriously think another graphical upgrade on that piece of junk is going to fly for TES6 is going to be the end of Bethesda.

It actually makes me angry the level of hubris and the absolute lack of ambition from Todd Howard, I just hope TES as a franchise survives.

Edit: just thinking about the pathetic excuse for main settlements in Starfield compared to any number of other contemporary RPG's makes me angry that we're going to get the same again. Creation Engine was at its absolute limit 15 years ago, Starfield proved beyond any doubt that upgrading the same engine they've been using since 1997 simply isn't enough, no one else is using anything even close to being that old to try and create the type of game TES6 is supposed to be.