Maybe in this instance Starfield was merely a victim of feature creep over the course of a protracted development cycle, but I personally think the space setting should be avoided for this genre going forward until the devs/engines find a way to lift exploration elements wholesale from games like No Man's Sky or Outer Wilds. Otherwise there's just not much way to make it feel like more than a third-rate clone of Mass Effect 1 from 16 years ago aside from having better writing, better lore, and a better atmosphere than this and The Outer Worlds anyway. I will give it credit for having a relatively polished launch and nice gunplay by Bethesda game standards though, it's just too bad all the things surrounding it feel like aimless busywork even moreso than Fallout 4's settlement building.