imma be real with you pre-gen didnt ruin starfield bethesda/toward howards inability to commit to either a full rouge like looter shooter dungeon diver or a story rich simi linear story open world game is what ruined starfield and its kinda what ruined fallout 4 too bethesda games like fallout 4 skyrim and now starfield could have been great if they didnt try and mash two very conflicting game designs together. the issue is that pre-gen looter shooter dungeon crawling is what sold most people on skyrim the only difference is skyrims reasoning for sending u to fucking around in dungeons seemed less contrived where as even in the moment so much of fallout 4s "story" takes u out of the experience because how disconnected and jarring everything is. as much as i do believe starfield probably was todd howards baby because of how over reaching it clearly is almost all bethesda games have been over reaching but the scale of starfield and what it attempted i think were simply infeasible i normally dont like to shit talk bethesdas engine because it is really good for what theyve been doing and it provides a easy canvas for people to add too with mods but starfield and to a lesser extent fallout 4 really showed that the engine or atleast the people working with it are being pushed to the end of there ropes. the gamebryo engine or what ever name it goes by now has always struggled with making built up cities and areas fallout 4 proved this fallout 3s DC being 95% cut and the vegas strip in fallout new vegas needing drastic reworking and shrinking show that the engine just cannot handle these cities/highly built up areas well at all