Starfield - AAA games "optimization" in a nutshell

Bethesda devs when I tell them about bump maps:

There is literally no reason to subdivide a flat surface 16 times both vertically and horizontally and use the resulting box as a rendered model.
They could easily replace each face of the box with a basic 26 triangle mesh and keep the same level of detail.
That's BASIC Blender 101.

At MOST they can do a detailed box, then use that mesh to create a detailed bump map, which then they use on a mesh with less triangles, maintaining virtually the same level of detail.