Why don't you mention the main reason people play Bethesda games? EXPLORATION. I enjoyed Witcher 3 but that is not a sandbox game. Half the time it was like watching a movie with all the cut scenes.
People play Fallout and Elder Scroll games because you can do what you want and don't have to pay attention to quests that utterly bore people. Maybe it's because playing CRPG's since the 1980's I have seen all these quests before and they do not excite me that much. I would rather go off and explore and do my own thing and test my build against the monsters out there. Exploration and strategy are the reasons I love sandbox games.
Add mods to the mix and you can really play the game you want. The best times I had with Skyrim was playing a miner and blacksmith. Modded the game so the monsters were harder and added new creatures. I did not even follow the dragon story line.
Sorry but most books are better then stories in video games. Bethesda games can be played like a blank book where you are the writer and that is much more exciting to me. Don't get me wrong theme park games can be fun but there are very few well made sandbox games out there.
See that's why I don't understand the appeal of Bethesda's games… What exactly is there to explore? From what I've seen of FO4 the environments look extremely bland, so surely it isn't to enjoy the view… Is it just all about endlessly killing monsters / collecting loot to kill more monsters? (With clunky combat and terrible enemy AI). What exactly am I missing?
And ideally what I want from a CRPG is a game similar to Age of Decadence (turn-based tactical combat that is challenging but relatively rare / often avoidable, lots of choice & consequences) but with a party that I can control in battle…. Is there a mod that can give me that for any of Bethesda's games? I don't like having to sift through hundreds of dull fetch quests to find the handful that are interesting either. Is there a mod that eliminates all of the filler content?
If not then I'm pretty sure that Bethesda's games would be a waste of my time and money.