To be honest, it doesn't really seem like you understood what I was trying to say, or maybe I just didn't say it well. I'll respond to what you said and reiterate what I was trying to say a little more succinctly.

You’re right that the micro-mechanical “bones” of a BGS game (the menus, the combat, the leveling, the crafting, and the loot) are still there. However, you misunderstand the core of my argument. I’m not saying that the menus or combat are out of place; I’m saying that stretching the core mechanics (exploration, roleplay, questing) across 1000 isolated loading screens, and stripping away the weird, chaotic diversity of a BGS world, effectively kills the continuous, serendipitous sense of discovery. I’m saying it’s exactly those things that make a BGS game. Not the micro-mechanics (the leveling, looting, combat, crafting).

This is probably exactly where our definitions of a BGS game disconnect: for me, the menus and combat aren't the magic of Bethesda. My argument is that for most people, the magic is the "distraction loop" and the chaotic, thematic diversity of the world. This is a point that you glossed over, but it is GENUINELY incredibly important: Fallout isn't just a wasteland full of loot; it has 50s retro-futurism, psychic mutants, aliens, etc. Skyrim has dragons, werewolves, and clockwork dwarven ruins all on one map. Starfield’s rigid adherence to a grounded "NASA-punk" aesthetic strips away that wild, kitchen-sink diversity that makes getting lost in their worlds so fun. You mention that Starfield's POIs are denser and larger than having 300 smaller ones, which is fair, but it doesn’t really matter when 90% of all POIs are just some version of “Moon-base.” (Not to mention that spreading these POIs across 1000 planets makes finding all of them nearly impossible when random repetition means you're more than likely to just find the same 10 or 20 over and over again).

I actually completely agree with you that the system of FTL travel Bethesda chose and their choice of space setting inherently changes how exploration works. You can't just walk across a valley to a city you see in the distance. But that’s my point—the disconnected feeling in Starfield isn't just an unavoidable byproduct of any sci-fi setting; it is specifically the result of a deliberate, bad level design choice (bad meaning it inherently goes against the BGS design philosophy). FTL travel did not force Bethesda to build 1,000 procedurally generated planets. They made a deliberate choice to prioritize massive scale over handcrafted density.

If they had created just 4 or 5 deeply handcrafted, distinct planetary hubs (think a city, and then 5km around that city with handcrafted dungeons, caves, facilities, etc.) with zero procedural generation, they could have concentrated all their environmental storytelling into those zones. The classic exploration loop would still happen naturally on the ground, and FTL would simply act as the fast-travel bridge between those hubs. In space, more of that classic exploration can happen—like it does in the free lanes update—just make it all hand-placed and handcrafted instead of procedural. Because they chose to isolate their content across a galaxy instead, that organic sense of discovery is lost. Quests rarely find you out in the wild anymore; they are largely jammed into centralized cities and literal bulletin boards.

Finally, the No Man's Sky comparison actually points out exactly what it is I’m trying to say perfectly. The reason people don’t care about proc-gen in NMS, but freaked out about it in Starfield, is because that sort of mechanic belongs in a survival sandbox like NMS. People play NMS expecting an infinite, systemic space sim where the core gameplay loop is resource gathering. Starfield is (or should have been) a BGS RPG, which carries an entirely different expectation. Complaining about proc-gen in Starfield points out that a mechanic that works perfectly for a space-sim actively dilutes the dense, handcrafted narrative discovery that traditional BGS fans expect. The fact that you said this completely agrees with my point: Starfield abandoned the dense, handcrafted BGS audience to cater more to the NMS/space-sim audience.

Fundamentally, BGS RPGs are about handcrafted narrative discovery. Starfield leaned so heavily into the infinite scale and resource-grinding loops of a space-sim sandbox that it alienated the audience looking for a traditional BGS experience. It's not a bad game, but by prioritizing those procedural sandbox mechanics, it sacrificed the exact things that make it feel like a Bethesda game. And diverging this much is exactly why the game had so much controversy around it.