I don't want to be blunt, but perhaps it's your hardware instead.

I don't have washed out textures and to be honest it makes little sense to say that the engine is out dated. Sure, it's no "Crysis", but the engine visibly has been updated. It's obviously not the same as Oblivion.

I'm not saying the game is visually perfect, but outdated engine? Heck no.

But at the same time I agree about the lack of shadows though. I've just realized what you meant there. It has no stencil shadows or something similar, the world never casts large shadows anywhere. That does indeed make the game look very sterile,

Cheers