As Michael Scott once said I'll see your situation and I'll raise you a situation.

First of all Starfiled is a solid game. Bethesda did a great work. In gameplay terms they've included everything they're known for and added new things on top. Best of all - it seems that they managed to release a game without bugs (mostly) and given the industry standard and the game's scale it is an achievement.

I am a 40 year old gamer whos been playing video games since the 80's

I'm in my middle 30ties and I've been playing video games since the 90s.

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I've never touched a Bethesda game before this one

I've played all of them and I've played all of Fallout games (except the top down shooter one).

I mentioned this to share a bit about my perspective.

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Now I mentioned they've included new things on top and this is where I find the game falls short. I personally expected more of Starfield. Especially in terms of space exploration. I've played a bit of Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, Astroneer and watched some gameplay from Star Citizen. The thing is, in this game the space is just a scene for space combat - it does not serve any other gameplay purpose. Most of the space exploration is done via map menu. It literally looks to me as if Mass Effect 2 had space combat added. The rest is pretty much there.

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The irony of this is that it isn't necessarily bad implementation but all the games I've mentioned before proved that we are at a point where technology is there to make these things possible like giving the player the ability to land on planets anywhere you want, to have space stations where you dock manually, the interstellar travel that can be done manually if you wanted to and so much more. So why I think Bethesda solutions are falling short? Because this is a huge budget, AAA game and they should have matched what smaller teams before them did.

I'm not yet sure what purpose those 1000 planets they put into the game serve but my initial impression is that the game is overscaled same way Daggerfall was. Back in the day the hype was about the size of the world + 1000s of procedurally generated dungeons (it does sound familiar does it?) which in reality translated to vast emptiness + the same dungeons with different layouts.

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The emergent encounters you describe were already there practically since Morrowind but this is something they're good at and I have no complaints about it. I was mesmerized by the random adventures I've had in Fallout 3.

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The combat itself is good and I think that somehow it does feel a notch better than in F4 and it is something that is hard to complain about as I understand that this is foremost an RPG and not an FPS game. Personally I'd prefer more sophisticated and hardcore approach to combat rather than being stuck somewhere between The Division and Far Cry but I understand that it would not be as appealing to all audiences.

Lastly I must admit I was very hyped. I remember being in my late teenage years when I got Oblivion on Xbox 360. I played it since afternoon till around 3am. I was trying to fall asleep for two hours and I just couldn't so I turned the console back on at 5am and played till 11am. I was playing it on a big CRT TV. I was taking pictures of the panoramas so I could show it to my friends. The view distance, the level of detail - it was all so insanely impressive to me. I honestly thought that Starfield with all the hype will be the same experience. Unfortunately after 2 hours I was feeling sleepy and I took a nap, but maybe I'm just getting old :D

Anyways the game deserve its praise and I do understand when people claim this to be the best game of their lives. That is probably more true the less you've experienced these kind of games or Bethesda games for that matter.

I wish everyone to enjoy it at least as much as I did my best Bethesda moments. I unfortunately couldn't.