So here's the thing about space simulators: There's no such thing as a space simulator. That's because it's kind of a paradoxical thing. To truly capture the wonders of space you need A LOT of scale, and scale can be sublime and powerful and fascinating, but also, 90% of the time it's incredibly boring. Realistic space travel would feel less like a video game and more like a screensaver. 

And, worst of all: Nothing truly has the depth and detail that it should have.

Even the most ambitious of space sims are usually very shallow experiences that revolve around fighting stuff, travelling, extracting resources and scoring various points. It lacks the necessary pacing of what you need for a game to feel sublime. Games, especially RPGs or action games at least in the English speaking world seem to be very averse to having digestible moments of slow pacing between moments of action. STALKER is incredibly designed in how you actually spend a lot of time just travelling in relatively peaceful and yet suspenseful moments between the action, which forces you to actually take in the world and observe your surroundings, and that's why it's considered one of the most immersive games ever made.

Visually speaking, something like the Modern Warfare series is very detailed and visually interesting, but your HUD is clogged with floating markers and objective texts and constant enemies popping up everywhere in an endless gunfight which trains you to mainly focus on movements and hitmarkers, meaning that the actual world around you becomes a bit of a blur. 

Another clever thing STALKER used was anomalies, which were subtle environmental hazards that required you to carefully observe the world around you as everything was basically an organic minefield. 

And one problem with Starfield is that it has a bit of an identity crisis in this regard. It wants the openness and detail of STALKER, but it also wants the gameplay design of Call Of Duty. And the result is jarring, to say the least.

So, off the bat, I will say this:
Starfield is not a game about space. Much in the same way that Star Wars are not films about space. 

The best way to understand both titles is to basically think of the planets as countries, and space as the sea. It's Sid Meier's Pirates! but in space. And that's fine. 

For example, in Star Wars, there's really no such thing as aliens. Not truly aliens. Not HG Wells aliens. The Tusken Raiders are a good example of this. The Tusken may look different from us, but their clothes, habits, inventions, customs and language makes them feel less like people from a different planet, and more like people from a different country. 

When the Tusken raise their rifles in the air and let out their strange howling laugh, you can empathise with their gesture, they're doing a sort of victory taunt and we can see ourselves doing that. That's not very alien. 

To put it into perspective: The Japanese Embassy in France has a helpline for Japanese people who suffer culture shock. French customs have been known to be so jarring and offensive to Japanese sensibilities that some tourists experience full-blown panic attacks. 

And that's just people from Japan going to France. Imagine people from Earth going to an alien city in a different galaxy. 

Same goes for Starfield's fauna. They're sort of spiders, or sort of wolves, or sort of dinosaurs, etc. etc. We can look at these creatures and think "Huh, that's basically what we have on Earth except weirder." 

And that's fine. Star Wars never had a lot of space in it. For the most part space is just a backdrop for set pieces such as chasing sequences and epic space battles. It's a blank canvas intended to serve as a vehicle for creative ideas that would feel implausible on our all too familiar Earth. 

Which sums up Starfield too. It's not a game about space exploration, it's a game about ball shaped countries full of pseudo-animals and space magic and it's more akin to the scale felt by the travels of Francis Drake or Olaudah Equiano than that of Neil Armstrong or Yuri Gagarin. It's meant to be a space-themed sea full of space-themed islands.

And that's totally okay. There's a lot of fun to be had there. But only if we actually accept it for what it is and work with what's been given to us.