I’ve only seen people stream it and it looks… like a Bethesda game. Like, to a fault.

I’m reading that’s what a lot of people expected, and I’m honestly surprised.

With one massive, at least for me, flaw. Previous Bethesda games had handcrafted maps which invited you to explore every region. There was so much to find in the most unexpected places. Starfield doesn't have that. I mean sure, even on remote desolate planets you can find objects of interest, but in the end they do repeat very quickly. In Starfield the world is much bigger but ultimately less diverse and well built. And to me that's a less appealing game.

And another smaller problem is that they no longer seem to want to go into the darker stories. The game does have quite some potential of exploring darker themes like the despotic parts of the UC organisation for example. But it never does dive deeper but sticks to the surface. You can imagine that there's much more going on but you don't get to experience this.

The game may have been 25 years in development, but their AAA standards must have also been from that time.

There would have been a period of time where Starfield's release would be heralded as one of the greats (probably 2013-2017). But in 2023, it already looked outdated on release.

I'm also surprised so many people expected it to be just another underwhelming Bethesda game, because that sure was not what they were promising

It's been years but Daggerfall to me feels like the ideal RPG. They did make it a point to make simpler games after Daggerfall. Beginning with Morrowind, the magic categories slowly got reduced, the skills were intentionally consolidated and reduced in number. That's the reason why the later games sold really well. Starfield still sold well despite the valid criticisms but they should have trended into more complexity for a space game. Bethesda games are the junk food of games (and sports games are Mountain Dew or something).