Well, why the fuck did it HAVE to be under 5 GB? What's imposing that limit, in your mind?
The problem is that the game was made to be played on 5 year old hardware (i.e. the Xbox 360), and when it was ported to the PC, Bethesda didn't bother enhancing the graphics to the point that the game could take full advantage of modern hardware.
I do think the game looks good, but those screenshots actually illustrate a good number of the problems: aliasing of foliage textures (I find this REALLY distracting), low-res textures, etc. Yes, of course everything looks best from a distance, but to play the game you gotta look at things up close.
Look, the point is that when games were developed for PCs first, they were allowed to push the envelope if you had the hardware to support it (or if you didn't you probably could get a good experience at lower level settings). Now, it seems that more and more games are being made for the out-dated hardware of consoles first, then ported to PCs without enough of an enhancement to their graphics to support modern hardware.
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