I kind of think it does apply to modern graphics and game design in the same way. A fast paced action shooter still needs moments where you catch your breath, it's never just an endless constant flood of enemies. A visually beautiful game still has bits that aren't particularly interesting or you'd get an overdose of visual information and wouldn't be able to identify what was important.

Similarly, starfield has a lot of small barren moons that don't have a lot of resources. They are boring compared to the green worlds (there are tons of these too though, which every repeat of this thread has glossed over), but they still have stuff going for them. I spent my evening last night exploring a smuggler base that I randomly fell into while looking for a place to put an aluminum mine on a barren moon. The night before it was a (very cool) mission on an abandoned mining platform.

However, in the process of going to and from these sites, I definitely felt like I was travelling across a barren, dusty moon. That helped the feel. Both those quests had storylines that were inherently tied to the fact that the setting was a barren, dusty moon, rather than a teeming, thriving planet.

Bottom line, I think this one over-shared article says nothing of importance. If you go to one of these 'boring' moons there's lots to do, just not 'explore and identify the planetary life' kind of stuff. you can tell at a glance which planets are more likely to have settlements and things from space, and there's more of them than any one person can explore, so it really doesn't matter that there are also a bunch that aren't like that.

Fair point. I would agree to say there should be a healthy middle ground. I think coming across theme park-like spectacle around every corner would remove a lot of immersion and most authenticity (specifically trying not to default to "realism" because then we'd specifically want 99,999% of areas to be lifeless rock) not only from Starfield but many many games. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Red Dead Redemption and the Metal Gear series would be incredibly different games, if it was just from one action sequence to another and then a beautiful story cutscene immediately and with only loading screens separating them from each other.

I guess I'm trying to say that immersion into and attachment to a game is increased if you give opportunity for (or sometimes force) the player to calm down. Red Dead 2, for example, does this masterfully by its generally slow and deliberate pace for most actions (cooking steak by actually making you hold the meat over fire for a couple seconds, making you walk/ride for long passages to get somewhere even during missions, etc.) and by sprinkling in quite a number of relaxing quests, like watching a movie with your girlfriend, in a game that's mainly known for shooty tooty cowboy action.

To wrap up that wall of text, I guess I'll see if the ratio of interesting tidbit for every dull landscape is too low for me in Starfield once I get my hands on it c:

Update: Game's good, if your expectation was "Space game made by Bethesda". I like it and am very happy with the amount of barren planets for every lush world. Sure, they lack the "discover flora and fauna" activities but there's still plenty fun stuff to do.