"It became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together," says former lead quest designer Will Shen.
""We were finally at a state in the project where we could play through the whole [game]. And it became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together and have a satisfying action-filled payoff," Shen said. "I was both implementing the main quest and leading the quest design team, so I had absolutely no time. The entire quest design team was already overbooked.""
The quest design team being overbooked and not having time certainly explains a lot.
Stop demanding replay ability and meaningful choice. You are ruining modern gaming!
Enjoy your radiant quests and feel satisfied fetching stuff and killing stuff endlessly.
... Seriously, there was a thing that bothered me about playing Space Invaders in the arcades and it was the fact that no matter how good you got the ending was always either your inevitable death or the fact that you just stopped playing.
Bethesda probably got a big shock with Starfield (although I'm assured it still made a lot of money). My hopeful guess is that more carefully crafted expansions/updates + community mods will make the game great in a few years with features that improve replayability like branching quests. I'm putting off buying until then though.