I told my friend months ago that as far as I can recall of all the Bethesda games I've played, in vanilla they are all at best, good. Skyrim and Fallout 3 are probably the pinnacle of their gaming achievements, but they are good, not great. The ability to mods their games into a Thomas the Tank Engine, Gothic horror, telenovela hellscape abomination is what makes those games great.
Starfield I think will be the same. It's an ok game, but when the mods start really rolling in is when it will be worth playing.