Having to write down stuff in games nowadays would never fly. They have to put compass directions, map labels, quest logs, etc on everything or nobody would play it. Or at least, not enough people.
But a lot of what you say is exactly why fans seem to prefer Morrowind over Oblivion. Nothing is a repetition, nothing scales with your level, the dungeons don't have random enemies or items, and every single quest was planned, penned, and executed without any random generation. What I don't like about Morrowind is the dice-roll combat system (you can be firing an arrow directly at an enemy, or swing and hit an enemy but if the dice-roll doesn't lie in your favour depending on your stats, you will miss), you can't recover arrows, the fact that magic never recovers automatically, and the Cliff Racers.
