Did you try "beyond skyrim: bruma"? It's only one province of the planned entirety of tamriel, but that was many excellent hours of exploration, and it feels like the plotlines are really going somewhere, whenever they get finished with the rest of cyrodiil. Shame there are some places that feel unfinished (because they involve other provinces), but that mystery made it more intriguing, in my opinion.

Also, it has a soundtrack that I actually like more than the original skyrim soundtrack, and that is saying something.

Edit: finally got down far enough in the other comments to see you've played it. Ah well.

TK Dodge RE made melee combat much more interesting when I last played. I could finally enjoy playing someone other than a stealth archer. :)

Adamant and other overhauls from SimonMagus did likewise for various other game mechanics. Some people prefer Ordinator and other overhauls from EnaiSiaion.

Interesting NPCs adds a bunch of potential followers, and the one I chose was fun.

Have you played: https://store.steampowered.com/app/933480/Enderal_Forgotten_Stories/

I know what you mean.

Bethesda games are kind of a one-time experience.

Get a modpack from Wabbajack. It comes with 1000s of mods and makes the game feel entirely new.

Have you played survival mode? It's a little annoying at first, but now that I've gotten into it it feels so natural and I almost can't play on normal.

Also, Red Dead Redemption 2.

Try "Enderal", a free total conversion of Skyrim. New world, lore, quests, skills, everything. It's pretty good!

I can't help with mods, but other games scratched the same itch for me. The wild era zelda games (breath of the wild & tears of the kingdom) are a dead ringer, and I probably spent over 600 hours across both. The Horizon series (horizon: zero dawn, horizon: forbidden west) are really good. A bit more story than skyrim, less caves, but still lots to do, and if you don't know the story, the first game has so much mystery in its world building thats fun to discover as you play!

I prefer the fantasy genre, so similar sci fi games didnt do it as much for me, but some of the fallout games and the outer worlds games are similar gameplay. The Outer Worlds 1 is basically just Firefly but with less charming characters, but i mean its hard to compete with Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, and Alan Tudyk.

if new experience in skyrim is something you're interested in, a mod like Beyond Skyrim: Bruma is awesome. i highly recommend it.

i also recommend playing a character with a theme or restrictions. I'm currently playing a character that's not permitted to use physical weapons or use armor. pure spell caster. and I've got a few QOL mods to make mage armor a bit more in line with the other two armor types. and a fun new perk tree (Vokrii) that's got a ton of class replayability.

its very fun to play that way. and also means you can play a character. or roleplay.

i hope you have fun <3

Try "random start" mods.

Instead of taking you thru the opening scenes of a big RPG like Skyrim, it just punts you to some random area so you can immediately start messing around

A lot of games have big scripted events the first couple hours, being able to skip those helps it from feeling repetitive, because that's the stuff you've done ever playthrough you've ever started.

If you haven't ever played survival mode before it really changes it. You stop blazing through quests becoming an action hero and have to take your time more, finding places to be cozy and considering your surroundings.

EnaiSiaion made mods that change all the perk and race mechanics, just having those be different kind of motivates you to try skills you never bothered with before.

Spend less time in menus, you can still beat the game in higher difficulties without grinding iron daggers

Oh, and for once try not to play a stealth archer. The combat hits different when your goal is not to minimize NPC's reactions to everything.

A streamer I like has been playing Avowed. It’s different in a lot of ways, and on modern detail levels it ends up being smaller, but I feel like it was maybe a bit over-criticized by players.

Wabajjack mod lists are deffinetly a must try, something like Enderal or LoreRim

I'd also check out a game called "The forgotten city". Haven't played it myself, but I did play the Skyrim mod it was based off of, and the story was solid, I liked it a lot. Or just try the mod itself.

Surely depends on what kind of gamer you are. For me, the museum-mod (forgot the name) and all its addons made the last run very special despite the aging everything. It totally changed the way I did everything. And it all revolved around collecting all the shit I never cared for.

There’s a slew of mods you can install to really change stuff, but I think the best starting point would be an alternate start mod. There’s two approaches to these, a short questionnaire that is part of character creation which gives your character a bit of background and spawns you in a corresponding location. To start the main quest you simply visit Helgan at any time.

The other approach is basically just random starting locations. This is often used for higher difficulty mods packs aimed for a rouge like experience.

Morrowind. Its older (should easily runnwell on your rig), and its combat mechanics are more similar to table-talk rpgs (an attack might look like it should hit, but the game internally rolls dice to see if it beats enemy armor etc.), but its an immensely better RPG experience compared to Skyrim.

OpenMW is the most recommended way to play since its a reimplementation of the game engine, fixing various bugs and improving compatibility with modern computer systems while adding some modern features like shadows for terrain and more optimized lighting.

How about Fallout? Two of them are a similar experience.

I would look at mod collections on nexus or wabbajack. Beyond that, there are mods that allow you to have a different start to the game than "so you're finally awake", which delay the main quest until you effectively start it yourself.

Constellations is a good mod collection on Nexusmods.