It's strangely comforting to know that Bethesda have always been awful at UI design. On the other hand, though, how is it that after 2 decades they are still terrible at UI design? You'd think at least by Morrowind they would have figured out the basics but that game's UI is absolutely atrocious. Oblivion showed improvement but then Skyrim was awful again.
Well Arena had the excuse of being a 1994 DOS game and not that many games from that period have aged particularly well.