The game is aggressively Bethesda but I'm enjoying the visuals and sniffing the 3d model of every insignificant bit of detritis in the world. I saw a very nice looking bowl, maybe THE bowl of all videogames. Other than that the narrative and main story has already lost my interest after about 10 minutes and I'll be off being a space menace if the game will let me.
Once i found out I can travel using the ship in scanner mode it doesn't feel like a map simulator anymore.
Also the chef having a perk for dueling tickles me.
Game also runs like shit on PC but digital foundry showed most settings being on medium yields good performance with no noticable quality loss.
Its fun, I'm having fun, but frustratingly not as good as it could be.
Level grind curve makes Morrowind look forgiving. There's just a lot of annoying shit and ways things could be handled better like transitions could have been done in game rather than via cutscene, just keep the warp animation up like every space game since Privateer. Encumbrance is irritating, base building is frustratingly obtuse. In terms of choice outside of a couple of quests you are railroaded down good/evil paths. Let Me Shoot the Quest Critical Character Bethesda! There are so, so many CEOs in this game I just wanted to shoot as soon as they tried to push me around. Finally, it looks like the deep lore isn't. The big questions like the main quest and the Varuun seem to just hit a brick wall, and there's so far not a lot of small questions outside "I think the terrormorphs are a sentient civilisation."
The worldbuilding is so, so depressing. It's easier to imagine the complete ending of the human condition than the end of capitalism.
And I'm stuck with the bug where when you go into menus it re-renders at 4k and your framerate tanks into single digits. So that sucks.
Pretty sure the Varuun will be the subject of DLC. It's a good hook that can't be expanded at all by modding so it's ground they can build on without any fear of losing income to mods.