Gaming

Yup, this. I've played two runs by myself and on my fourth with some buddies and I'm still finding out meaningful stuff I didn't do on my solo runs. Starfield is an upgrade in tons of aspects over previous beth titles (big exception is planetside exploration), they fixed tons of issues both Skyrim and F4 had. Skill checks, while not as present as they should be, pop up once in a while. Skill tree isn't as boring as F4 but build variety suffers, same as in Skyrim. Character background pops up in convos sometimes (but isn't as deep as it could be).

That's starfield. It has the makings of a good game, and it is, but it plays it very safe. And because of that, NPCs are boring, as is the story, as is combat, as is pretty much everything else in the game. The only thing that impressed me was that one mission in the main quest but even that one was limp dicked on the finish. And ship costumization, but if I wanted in-depth ship mechanics I'd play KSP.

Like the game was too ambitious and too chicken shit at the same time.

don't worry, the gap gets a lot smaller when you reach act 3 in BG3 lol