Been reading various reviews of Starfield after its release and carefully trying to assemble a good mental model of what it's like, and this is what I've got so far —
Yeah, Starfield's procedurally generated content is boring and the planets are samey, and its space travel and planetary exploration are a bit limited (although according to a professional reviewer of space sims I trust, its spaceship building, combat, and flight model is actually pretty good!), but its handcrafted content and RPG elements are apparently (according to several people) absolutely amazing and the best Bethesda have ever done, a return to form for them, the gunplay is good, and there's more handcrafted content than most entire games have so you don't gotta fuck with the procedural stuff if you don't want to.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/destroyamerica/recommended/1716740/
That said, as usual for a Bethesda game, I'm expecting the main story to be incredibly boring and generic and mostly composed of fetch quests, and that too seems borne out by reviews. I'm also worried their worldbuilding won't be very interesting, because 90% of the reason I like their Fallout games is thanks to the really creative and interesting setting, and they didn't come up with that setting themselves, and Starfield's setting looks pretty meh
@anarchopunk_girl I have been a bethesda fan since New Vegas all the way through to 76 and ESO. So I absolutely sprung for the early access. It is definitely recognizable as a bethesda game and the early game is a fair amount of fetch quests while you learn the mechanics but DAMN is it pretty and engaging as you get into the stories. Even the side quest stories are full of the human touches that NV and Skyrim had. Considering that I am days in now with only one appearance of the, by now standard issue, dancing corpse glitch I would say this is a VERY successful bethesda game. I am already planning my second playthrough.
@mstrmustache I actually don't typically count New Vegas as a Bethesda game but if you're mentioning it in the same paragraph as Starfield that's a good sign!