It’s an open world game that doesn’t have a reason to be open world. The open world is just empty procedurally generated terrain, with occasional creatures or enemies.

I once went exploring outside of one of the main towns. There were a few points of interest, but they were very few and far between. And they weren’t even really fleshed out. They were just sort of… There. Like you’d occasionally find a mercenary base, but there wasn’t anything beyond that. No environmental storytelling, no quest hooks, no purpose. It was obviously just filler content, like they slapped a few structures around the landscape so they could check tasks off of a to-do list.

In older Bethesda games, you could just pick a direction and start walking. You’d stumble upon interesting things fairly quickly, regardless of which direction you picked. But that’s not the case in Starfield. The worlds are almost entirely empty, save for the one or two quest points that pointed you at the planet. It felt less like “Skyrim in space” and more like “the worst parts of Mass Effect’s Mako missions, condensed into an entire game.”