Fallout 3 Originally Released in 2008 and while not ‘game breaking’ if you’d pardon the pun - it was service-able. Starfield really doesn’t feel any better than Fallout 3. It’s the same amount of content with more empty space in between. I will say that the writing was better back then but maybe that’s nostalgia.
I haven’t seen anything like the Ant-agonizer vs the Mechanist in terms of originality in Starfield.
2004 would be between Oblivion (2006) and Morrowind (2002) which were quite a bit more player unfriendly.