Following up on your last thought: "a new direction in open world RPGs." -
What could such a new direction encompass?
As an example: maybe making ES6 more episodic could hold promise. In other words, rather than having to wait 5-7 years between games that consist of a huge vanilla game and two moderate sized DLC, we might get a 3 game series, each game being large in and of itself.
Let me outline a potential approach to this:
Let's say ES6 is in....Hammerfell. OK - the 1st installment covers 75% of the province. The 2nd installment covers the other 25% and then includes the Abacean Sea islands, what's left of Yokuda, and Thras. Part 3 crosses over into certain parts of High Rock and Cyrodiil, along with a major exposition of Orsinium Nova up in the far eastern mountains, smack up against the Skyrim border (in essence, a Dragontail mountains game.)
This may be far too ambitious and grossly unbalanced. I'm sure that a 3 chapter approach could be done better than what I have suggested.
What I'm really getting at is that an episodic approach might free up Bethesda resources to build deeper storylines and adventures while also providing an opportunity to offer a fuller game experience that is geographically greater than a single province. In other words, Bethesda's team might be able to do significantly more work AND of higher quality if they didn't have to 'vomit up' one single, massive game followed by two DLC that are, in essence, patches with stories that they simply couldn't fit into their schedule deadlines for the vanilla game.
If the above isn't clear, please say so and we can discuss further.