The thing I like most is that the procedural stuff is never forced on you. Go pirating a bunch of random ships with random people. Or stick around to the Mars colony. Go exploring random military and science bases, or only go to the ones that were handcrafted. It's really not hard to avoid the procedural content that bores you if any does. Nothing has bored me so far.
I learn the games I like from "what's wrong with it". Here's what's "wrong" with Starfield
- It's not a physics simulator. Ragdoll is about the best you're getting. The ship-building is unprecedented for an RPG, but not Space Engineers.
- It's not an action shooter. People ridiculed that guards won't aggro on you if you happen to shoot near them. There's a video of someone drawing a minigun outline around a chill guard
- It's not a seamless space simulator. You get load screens and the bases you're building are cooler than FO4 but no minecraft. The FPS portion is much more polished than ship-flying.
- It's not a NY Times bestselling storybook . There's a few tropey factions and a few obvious plot points. There's one specific mission where you'll want to take the "sneak an atomic bomb into the building and reenact Fallout3's Megaton bad version" strategy whether you play good or evil, but you won't have that option (you'll know the one I'm talking about if you see it). In that one case, I'd appreciate a "something good happens if you find a way to slaughter everyone in that boardroom", but again... not what the game is about.
...all of the above, of course, sums up to "Skyrim in Space".