I understand what you say, but it's also not completely true.
When you have point of interest in a planet you have no idea about what it is, you land close to it and then you have to walk a bit to reach it, so you have the whole walking toward a point of interest, slowing starting to see it getting bigger and bigger the more you get close etc, that random content can be bland and repeated, or can be something cool like a relict of ship or an abandoned mine or some event with npcs or whatever and let's be honest, every game has some bland and repeated content, even stuff like latest zelda and ER (i will say they have both more than "some" repeated content).
People with better english could explain my point better but you have to settle with my explanation.
It feels less natural and cohesive than just walking around because you see a point of interest in a menu before landing and doing the walking toward the objective experience, but when you actually land the experience is similar to exploring points of interest in skyrim.
If people were expecting to have 1000 skyrim maps to explore exactly like they do in skyrim then it's their fault, the deep dive clearly said that exploration was different from their previous game and more tuned to a big scope, and even thinking of having 1000 skyrim maps (or bigger) full of non-repeated content was moronic to say the least, rdr2 was in development for 9 years with a bigger budget and it has some repetition aswell. [....]
Well, it's good you're enjoying the exploration. Different strokes, as they say. Personally, to me, it just looks bland and boring. Exploration is supposed to excite a sense of wonder and discovery. Instead, we have long treks through nothing at all:
And if you go to 18:20-20:00, he talks about how many of the points of interest are just copy and paste. So, even after you schlep for minutes through an empty, barren landscape to get to the POI, it is just a repeat of what you've already seen before half a dozen times -- the same structure, same layout, even the same enemy placement and sometimes loot. That is a far cry from the feeling of open-world exploration we got in Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Morrowind.
As for expectations, well, I don't think I had any specific expectations -- except that I wanted it to deliver what I had loved about Bethesda games in the past: a big open world to freely explore, a palpable sense of immersion in that world, a sense of wonder and discovery connected to free exploration, and interesting quests. It sounds like Starfield does have some interesting quests, but (for me anyhow) fails on the other counts. It's a Bethesda game all right, but it doesn't have the same magic that made Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim so memorable for me.
I have also heard (repeatedly) that it takes 20 hours before the game starts to get good. I don't have that sort of patience. If a game doesn't grab me in the first couple hours, I'm out. The load screens and fast travel are another issue, but I've banged on long enough.
Anyhow, enjoy the game. It certainly has a lot of fans.
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