Starfield review - a game about exploration, without exploration

It’s not really “both” from a space simulator perspective. There’s no option to fly down to a planet and skim the surface, there’s no option to fly from planet to planet without a loading screen (or even just to a moon), etc.

Starfield is a good RPG set in space and I’m enjoying it, but I think it’s fair to criticize that it was marketed like it was going to be a space sim by Bethesda and that’s not really what we got. If you were excited about the simulator part you are going to be disappointed.

Hard disagree. For no other reason that it's impossibly difficult to find/sort missions by proximity. You got one blue blip on the map or hud, maybe a white blip if it's not active, but no options to make it active or to even find the mission in your mission list.

Not to mention, all travel is menu based. In space when you target a planet as your next destination, all it does is bring up the menu to fast travel to a location on that planet instead of... giving you the option to fly there yourself at warp speed.

Sure, you could do it one planet at a time instead of skipping systems... but it's all the same experience You never truly experience the part of exploration involved in experiencing the space between origin and destination. So it might as well all just be exploration by menu, even if you pretend you aren't.

I don't think fast travel is the problem. The problem is that there is an actual "exploration" part of the game, where you wander around planets scanning things and looking for points of interest, but it is by far the most boring part and I have not had much fun when interacting with it. There is nothing exciting to find, and it primarily rewards materials that I mostly haven't had a lot of use for, because when I need something specific for research or crafting I can buy it at the store, because materials are nearly worthless in terms of credits.

The mini-dungeons and other points of interest you can find need to be way cooler for the wandering-around-on-planets to be worthwhile, and the actual exploration gameplay needs something more than walking across plains and hills in order to be interesting.

The best parts of the game are when you pretend it's Fallout In Space and hang out in cities doing quests for randoms.

I think (for me atleast) the larger issue is the fact that I have to engage a cut-scene to land on a planet. I don't have an issue with a loading screen in order to get into the system, or even just outside of the planets atmosphere, but it's kinda weak that I also have a loading screen when landing.

I can agree that you absolutely can navigate without fast travel, but the whole design seems to be guiding you towards just fast traveling. From the menus always offering a "show on map" option, which then pulls up the prominent "land" prompt, to the fact that even fast traveling you're apt to hit 4 loading screens completely killing any sense of continuity, and that only gets worse if you try to actually navigate.

It feels like a big series of set pieces broken up by a ton of liminal either loading screens or menus, depending on your preference of poison. I've never felt like I was discovering cool things, just going to the next set piece.

The trouble is jumping around to dots on the map is still fast travel with extra steps.

It's common wisdom in gamedev that Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.
Blaming the player is pointless. It's a gamedev's job to deliver fun, whether the player wants it or not.

Maybe it's because I've only just made it to Mars, but I didn't know there was any other way to travel except for clicking and fast traveling. Click load click load click load planet. The tutorial tells you to do just that... is there something later on that says differently?

Basically your choices with travel are "how many load screens do I want to see between here and my destination." And that's not really what anyone wants. It is not the same as being able to walk from Solitude to Dawnguard. Not even remotely close. You can't even walk from settlement to settlement on a planet because they only ever have the one settlement.

I mostly agree and have been defending it from haters recently myself. But there is one thing in the way of "You can then jump to each dot on the way, look around, scan planets, get hailed by ships, visit places your scans found, etc on your way to your mission... I’m of the opinion thats what Bethesda wants you to do."

Starfield is a "looter shooter RPG" like other Bethesda games. And like other Bethesda games, your time off-leash is limited by your inventory size, with valuable items dropping that take up to 10% of that or more a piece. Awkwardly, ship storage is just not that incredible, until/unless you either go all-in on outposts or all-in on megaships. Which means you do end up having to stop and go to a city often, probably the one with your next mission goal.

It's not a huge gripe, but I think Bethesda has always used inventory to drive people back to populated centers to pick up quests.

Maybe I didn't pay attention, but I expected The Expanse (the game), where my ragtag of space murder hobos go from colony to colony doing quests a la Mass Effect and having space combat like in the show/books.

In contrast, we have the same "planes but not planes" in space that you need to first lower their shields then destroy the hull like in most space games.

Yep, good points, it just feels... predictable