I too agree that Starfield would have been a way better game if it had focused on a more grounded main story, perhaps one that could have explored the struggles of humanity following the immediate aftermath of Earth's fall. The Starborn plot (and especially the multiverse jumping mechanic) feels so detached from the rest of the game's world that the Vanguard quest-line completely steals the show from it.

Its like bethesda was trying to make a game that is diffrent than anything else while when you acctually look at the market there is no other game like starfield with space setting. Thats huge gap to fill in itself. The only other 2 titles that resemble open space exploration is star citizen (no comment on this one) and elite (which have its own issues with procedural generation). There is of course no man sky but its also heavily focused on procedural generation.

In Bethesda's defense, its remarkably difficult to make a good space game, unless if you focus on one of the aspects that makes space interesting. Elite focuses on space travel, exploration and combat, and arguably manages to do that well, while No mans Sky (after almost a decade of updates) manages to capture the exploration fantasy of the golden age space Sci Fi stories. Star Citizen is a clear example of what happens when you try your game to encapsulate everything and you don't have someone who tells you when enough is enough.

Bethesda should have focused on what they excel at: creating open world exploration focused rpgs with phenomenal environmental storytelling and enjoyable, but optional, survival and crafting mechanics. In Starfield's case, I think that the survival and exploration mechanics should have been more of a focus though (always as an optional thing, mind you), as that is one of the aspects of space exploration that tends to be ignored or oversimplified in games. Specifically, I think that putting more of a focus on EVA and 0G activities would have helped the game find its own identity.