Okay but the only "pushing of boundaries" you are referring to is in breadth of content. That does not say anything about the depth or complexity of the content, or the level of interactivity with it.
The things of depth and interactivity the Direct focused on, are not things without peer in other open-world games. Starfield might just have more of that in absolute number, but that's a poor metric to use to say "this is true next-gen", IMO.
Maybe the engine sucks due to being too cluttered, but if that's the case Bethesda should've worked harder to iron out those problems years ago.
The price to be paid seems to be the game not offering a 60 FPS option, but even lacking a 40 FPS option on consoles sucks too. At least there they could've used VRR to fake out smoother 60 or even 120 refresh support.
I watched the entire Showcase and Direct and, again, I haven't said anything bad about the game. It was one of the highlights and they had a lot of good stuff shown off. Some of my concerns from the 2022 footage and mentions are no longer a thing, either, so that's great.
I'm just not 100% on the idea it's the "first real next-gen game" as some people are putting it, or that it's the only game offering massive scale for an open-world game. Partly because "scale" is subjective.