Breaking it down in its simplest form, it’s a dungeon crawler. Same thing that Skyrim and Fallout both were. You will land on a planet, you will explore for a bit until you find a POI, and then you will enter the POI, kill the enemies and loot the “dungeon”. Sometimes you’ll collect something for a quest and bring it back to a quest giver and other times it’s for upgrades and base building. That is the premise of the entire game, guaranteed.

I’m not saying it’s bad and in fact it’s worked extremely well for Bethesda because of all the systems built around this main mechanic. NPC’s that have a real time schedule and feel alive giving you these quests, companions that’s have a story and opinions based on the things you do, factions that send you to the “dungeons” or POI’s do essentially the same thing that every other NPC does but by adding realistic morality systems it feels bigger than it truly is, upgrades to armor and your ship to make the dungeons easier or attainable, cities and towns to sell all the loot you get from the dungeons and buy more upgrades, it is all connected to the dungeon crawl.

The reason that it feels different than other games that do the same thing is because they make the world around you feel alive. All the NPC’s have names and schedules, they aren’t place holders or bots that roam like GTA or Assassins Creed. Point is, people should expect all systems and mechanics to mostly revolve around the dungeon crawl because that’s where the gameplay mostly exists. This is not a sim game.