Apple to oranges then?

I agree with both of you. I was hoping Starfield would be a mix of both, but sadly, it isn't

I mean... I think it's a pretty good space game too, depending on what you want.

Yesterday I took my custom-built ship to explore an alien world. On my way in, I was hailed by a merchant and warned there were pirates in system. I thanked them, they jumped off, and being me, I decided to go planet hopping until I ran into the pirates. Destroyed two, saw that one had a cool looking ship so I switched to EMP weapons and took out their grav drive and engines. Once those were offline, I boarded them. The damage had taken out their gravity so the whole ship was in zero-g, with pens and junk floating around, obscuring my vision. The firefight against the crew was surprisingly tough, as they had mounted auto-turrets that were at a distinct advantage against me because I was being thrown around by the micrograv, but I did eventually capture the ship. Once I got the gravity on, though, all the stuff in the interior crashed down and was scattered everywhere. I searched around to see if I could find some contraband... but it was too messy, and I guess I missed some, because when I jumped into a more civilized sector the SysDef patrols caught me. Here I am, flying a stolen pirate ship, trying to explain to the cops that the drugs in my hold aren't mine and I didn't know they were there. Usually I'd bribe the guy to let me through but that didn't work out well this time, and the next thing you know I find myself in the brig aboard the UC Vanguard under a bright lamp being interrogated by someone with far too much brass on his chest to be dealing with a reported drug runner. Looks like maybe I got myself in a bit over my head...

Anyway. If that's not a space game, I don't know what is. I can't think of any other space games that would offer that particular mix of space combat and RPG experiences. And that wasn't really an unusual play story! It's just that this isn't NMS, as I think that shows.

I’m a Day 1 NMS player too and I’m really glad and impressed how much the turned the ship around. I also come back for the expeditions/updates!

It's awesome when a game comes out that reinvents the wheel but maybe not every game has to do that, it can just be a decent game to spend some time forgetting about our worries in?

You’re right, nobody excepts a new invention of the wheel every time, but to keep with your analogy, I would be nice if the at least used the newer/updated wheel instead of hanging on to 15 year old ones - sure they still work, but the newer ones offer a lot of things I’ve got used to. Or in other words, the standards have changed quite a bit.

I really don’t want to hate on the game, it’s definitely on my list and if I can justify a small PC upgrade I will definitely play it. But I’m just a bit… disappointed, that Starfield didn’t live up to the hype/promises - this is also on me, I got again caught a bit by the hypetrain.

guess I should keep my expectations low then I'II be less likely to be disappointed.

I really hate that this has become a trend now… I really don’t know why and how, but at least in my opinion, this changed drastically over the last view years. I can remember when I rode the hypetrain until the release and wasn’t disappointed… but nowadays you really have to keep your expectations low to end up not disappointed (there are of course expectations).

But they were very clear about what you could and couldn't do.

True, but once I went through my first black hole, I came out somewhere in the middle of the great unknown, and I thought ok, now what? Do I just go back and diddle around in my own area, or what is this endless vast space even for? I kind of had an existential crisis making me wonder why I was doing anything in the game at all, why did anything I do matter? Never felt that one on a game before, haven't gone back yet because I'm not sure what to do.

Perfectly understandable, and nothing wrong with being a fan of them.