Wasn't there a couple of modders who was making the older elder scrolls game into the Skyrim engine? Wouldn't it be easier on Bethesda to just hire them and other talented modders to do it?

Then play something else. These are RPGs. You're supposed to immerse yourself and play the role. Are you a Khajiiti Skooma fiend who the Emperor stumbled upon that then goes on a wacky series of adventures? Did you say screw Jaffre and head straight to Kvatch cuz that's where your plug lives and end up going into literal hell to save him? Eventually becoming The Hero of Kvatch?

Did you parlay your new found fame into new found money which you used to greatly expand your skooma consumption? Along the way becoming leader of guilds and the avatar of a God?

Or did you mainline the golden path. Decide this is ass and dip because you have no imagination?

You get out of these games what you put in. My favorite skyrim playthrough is one without weapons. I use a mod called "Wandering Thuum Practitioner" and Ordinator. Those two will make you as near as possible a lore accurate user of Shouts. Don't need weapons. Something attacks you? Burp it to death. Shout it off a mountain. Roast it to ash. Because you were given some training in the Thuum by a former Greybeard who for whatever reason left High Hrothgar long ago. What are the odds that the old man would find The Last Dragonborn potentially decades before they were needed and gave them a boost.

But yes. They have fallen off. Starfield was fine. Once. The whole starborn plot was a waste of time. In my opinion. The shine falls off a multiverse real quick when there's no difference between the universes. I know what they expected. They gave modders all the room they'd ever need and then some to spread out and build anything they wanted. They expected modders to fill up the game. They got complacent that the modders would always be there to do what people with deadlines and budgets cannot. And I wish they had. I no-lifed Starfield when it came out. Loved it. But by my 2nd trip through the unity I was pretty much done with it. There was nothing else to see. No variation in the multiverse. Outside of The Lodge anyway. And they could have saved it with that first DLC. The potential was there. All they had to do was give us more about who came before us through The Unity. Some info about those who built it or discovered it. Advanced alien civilization or some cosmic god. Something. But no. We got human incompetence run amuck. That shit is boring. And it was boring. There was no grand mystery to solve. No clues to a greater understanding. Just nothing of consequence. So it flopped.

The next remake tho. Fallout 3. Oh that mfer is gonna do NUMBERS. You hear me?! We've been begging for a sequel to 3 or a remake for 20 years. Then after that I swear to Robert Edwin House's ghost they better do New Vegas.

I stopped paying attention to Bethesda when they released that Creator's Club (or whatever it was called) bullshit for FO4. That shit broke all the fucking mods I had, then they had the audacity to request $20 for a mod that was already freely available. I lost any respect I had for then in that moment.
I'm not giving them another dime...doesn't mean I won't still play their games though.

If anything this has raised my bar for TES 6. I didn't play 4 just as you did and sunk an ungodly amount of time into 5. I also played fallout 3 at the time of launch so I feel like I'm fairly versed in Bethesdas formula.

The progress from 4 to 5 is obvious. They put a lot of love into making Skyrim better than its predecessor in tons of ways. With the absolute flop of Starfield, they're putting all their chips into TES 6 and they know it. They're going to stick to the core gameplay that everyone expects, but how they expand and improve upon it is really what will make or break them. If they get the story telling down, it's all up to the mechanics of the game and design of the world.

My bar has absolutely raised by them putting this remaster out.

I think the remaster looks awful. Not only did they take out the soul, they decided to copy the aesthetic of ESO from the washed-out colors down to the shitty combat animations.

I really wish the people behind ESO would get fired, but they keep getting rewarded.

Maybe they're trying to get potential players of Elder Scrolls VI so hyped that they'll still play the new game even if it's sold 'games as a service' style

in which case, fuck that