TBH, I don't find the two cents-worth of a Kotaku writer makes the situation much clearer. I think some of the confusion comes from using the word "engine" as if it always means the same thing. I've argued several times that Unity-bashing is often unjustified, because, to a large extent, a commercial engine like that provides only the bare bones needed to make a game, and the quality and performance of games made with it is very much down to the developers using it.
But there are also engines like, for example, RPGMaker. That's very different to something like Unity, in that it is essentially a fully pre-coded RPG game, which you then customise and fill with content. I'd say it's more like a game-making kit than the basics provided by commercial engine. When you see a game is made with it, you know roughly what it's going to deliver - the way it does things, the constraints, the pros and cons. Every time it receives an update with some fixes and new features, you could say it is no longer the same engine, but it is still very much RPGmaker.
I think the Bethesda engine is more comparable to RPGmaker in that regard, though of course much more advanced. I think when people hear that essentially the same engine is being used again, people look back on the pattern of fairly incremental change, which has left it behind technically and tended to retain many of the same problems and limitations, and they're disappointed to see that continue. The idea of a brand new modern engine would seem much more promising. It's not impossible that the existing engine could be evolved into something much more cutting edge, but their history (and latest effort) suggests that we're not going to see a huge leap forward, and I think it is worth reporting.