I was watching "...why Skyrim?" by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it's so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn't enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It's so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!
Bethesda hasn't made a really good game since 2002, but it'll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.
Maybe my brain is broken, but at least in AoS I never really interpreted most of the pickups as things that were supposed to be useful, but rather as markers of exploration since the map had exactly one of each item.
AoS had a smaller map and better level design. Harmony of Dissonance is closer to sotn map wise