Wait, what? TW3 is a sandbox? You're going as far as saying it's better than Bethesda's?
Even Skyrim isn't a
pure sandbox but it's certainly a far better sandbox than TW3 because TW3, or any CDPR game for that matter, isn't meant to be a sandbox. At all. They're story driven games set in an open world with a few, rather typical, open world elements. The closest element TW3 has to a sandbox game is Gwent. A pure sandbox gives you no real objective and let's you do anything in it's world. Even Skyrim doesn't fit the bill perfetly but TW3 isn't even close to that.
In Bethesda's games, you can be whoever you want and almost whatever you want. From your "morality" to your fighting style all the way to emergent gameplay ideas. Few things scream immersive sim/sandbox than dumping a cauldron on a merchant's head so you can steal everything they own without repercussion as stupid as that sounds.
TW3 is an open world RPG. That's it. An amazingly good one but it is not meant to compete with Skyrim and vice versa. They are different product aiming to satisfy different interests.
I also find the "some of us need more" statement to ring of elitism. As in "them peons are satisfied with little, their betters need more". Not saying that's how you meant it, just how it sounds. Especially when the reality isn't that it's more, it's that it's different and not what you're looking for.
Simply put, there are things Bethesda does far better than CDPR and things CDPR does far better than Bethesda, if what you want is a story driven game with deep writing then Bethesda's games aren't what you're looking for but it certainly doesn't mean that CDPR's game are "more" because of their better writing. Just like if what you're looking for is a sandbox RPG that'll allow you to be pretty much anything you want (within reason considering the game world) then Bethesda's game
are what you're looking for but still not "more" than CDPR's games. Just different games meant to scratch entirely different itches.
Bethesda still has no rival in it's specific type of open world. The same way Rockstar doesn't have any rivals to it's open worlds. Hell, no one is really trying to compete with them because they're masters of their craft at this point.
I'd beg to differ! Morrowind was quite well written! Then it went downhill... very, very fast from Oblivion and on.
Still Starfield, has more lines than both Skyrim and FO4
combined and it's a new IP so
maybe Bethesda is going all out on the writing and it'll be much better.... maybe? One can hope.