I completely agree with this.
I've been saying it in the past that Bethesda is about the only company right now with the resources to pull off a sandbox game like this (well Obsidian sorta proved me wrong there).
Its just that they don't seem to care that much as those things were never a priority to them or their core audience…
I don't think it is so simple. I really think the exploration aspect of F:NV suffered due to the design there. This isn't a matter of one being better than the other, but when I went to play F:NV I approached it like playing F3 and previous Bethesda games, and it simply does not work as well for that kind of play.
This struck me the most at the end of the game. I had two very different experiences:
- In F3 I tried to make sure to visit every part of the map, and was enjoying that until the very end because more often than not when I got to someplace new there would be something interesting (whether little or big) to do there and I had a good time.
- In F:NV when I was late in the game and going around to see what else there was to do, I spent almost all of my time going someplace new, and there either being nothing there, or looking like something *could* be there, but I probably couldn't experience it because I didn't have whatever quest was needed going.
I ultimately stopped playing F:NV long before I had stopped playing F3, because I got really frustrated and tired of checking out new places and not finding anything interesting.
(And worst of all, they left the perk in F:NV to put all the markers on your map, which was great in F3 because it helped find everything, but completely sucked in F:NV because most of the markers ended up being for places I couldn't do anything at. That just pissed me off going off to all of these interesting seeming places marked on my map, and finding time after time nothing there to do.)
Again, this isn't saying that one is better than the other. The various main quests and factions in F:NV were great and far better than F3. But as an "open world go explore where you want" game, I don't think it is nearly as good.