I just don’t think Bethesda has it in them anymore. Except for Id and formerly Tango Gameworks, Bethesda proper and a lot of the other studios it had, have just been missing the mark. Like a lot of big studios, they get big, start to regurgitate what they’ve already done, and then fail to capture people’s attention after a while.
Why do you think Valve’s employees haven’t pushed for many new games? Anticipation got too high and they didn’t want to compete with the legacy of Half-life or Portal. Half-life Alyx came out and it was decent, but it didn’t move the story forward that much. It was mostly about doing a good VR game. Now, they have Deadlock coming out and it has nothing to do with any of it’s previous games.
At a certain point, it’s like reading a book from an author that’s run out of ideas or hearing a song from an artist that doesn’t have anything relevant to say anymore. It’s time to move on and make room for someone wants to do something new. Only problem, these big ass companies are now mostly about making money and not about making games. They will ride whatever wave they can until they crash and burn.