The lead designer of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has discussed the difference in design philosophy between Bethesda games and Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
Tldr: The dev claims the big difference is Bethesda games try to never lock the player out of any part of the game depending on the choices the player makes. For example: every player should be the head of any guild in the game or recruit any companion, regardless of previous decisions.
The fact that the writing tends to be shallow, the characters 2dimensional, and the combat unfun was not brought up strangely enough...
Basically, BG3 is made to replay over and over again. Going off the last games in the series, for decades.
Bethesda wants you to play a single save for hundreds of hours hunting for every last bit of content.
So Bethesda has sprawling games where 100% is a timesink most people will never come close to.
The want to be able to say, this game takes X hundred hours. While BG3 is shorter, but more dense. Within 5 minutes of beating bg3, I started a new save and immediately enjoyed jt. There was lots of times I thought about starting a new Skyrim game, but early game just sucks