>>718530019
>Is space inherently a boring setting? It's 99.9999% empty
No it just hasn't been done well by hardly any games mainly because it is hard from a design perspective.
At the minimum for a proper "open" game focusing on space you need full ability to travel both in planet atmosphere and in space without loading screen, so basically like kerbal and NMS. If you aren't doing that then it is not even what I would consider a "space game"
I'd even consider Outer Wilds successful in this respect and it is a good example of why you do not always need some impossibly large empty planets to do his.

Now where the few games that make it this far then fail is providing a compelling narrative and things to do, outer wilds is mostly a walking sim, kerbal is a sandbox and NMS just has repetitive random mission and not much of a story.

What you really need next are actual planet specific quests. To be successful I would say you do need a lot but it would be possible to fill it adequately if you had enough unique quests and locations akin to Skyrim or Fallout NV.
You do not need every inch of every planet to be a theme park but you do need stuff out there somewhere for people to find if they search.
Starfield had potential if they actually had put in the effort but failed at this because nothing in the entire world is interesting and every quest sucks.

Have a solar system with maybe 10 planets throw maybe 20 towns between them and some factions, have some of the factions war and then you could use that as a main quest hook and you'd be able to jump into skirmishes and pick sides.
For side content you just fill it with usual scifi fiction tropes, space pirates, ship crashes, scary derelict abandoned ships in orbit, asteroid mining, OP advanced civilizations and technology, underdeveloped planets and moral decisions to fuck with. Just watch star trek, star wars, battlestar galactica and copy shit.

Probably what Starfield intended but devs were too lazy and dumb.

>>717368619
Nothing can save it because it is a game that simply fails at everything it tries. Normally I could find something good to say about even the worst games but Starfield I can't.
Everything is shit, the story, the characters, the items, the weapons, the side quests, the settlements, the planets, the enemies, the base building, the ship building, the ship combat.
I can't even stand the aesthetic, I hate the "nasa-punk" look they went for that infests almost everything.

Even fallout 4 which I consider a big downgrade from previous games still has enough for me to kind of squeeze some fun out of it and a bit more with mods but Starfield there is nothing. I legitimately will doze off while trying to play Starfield.
>Land on random planet, run 5 minutes, Enter generic copypaste officebuilding i've seen before, kill generic faceless goons with generic RNG randomized mmo style weapon I picked up that has random ability that makes no sense, that takes about 5 minutes, then spend the next 2 hours making 4 trips walking back to my ship hauling all the garbage generic loot so I can scrap it for materials (I also have to fly back from the planet with my base a couple times since my ship can't even carry all the trash), then after that absolute slog I use all the crap I found to expand my base or my ship (neither of which I actually look forward to because the aesthetic looks like shit to me and I don't need any of it to beat the game. In fact the only upgrade I really care about is the ability to carry/store more trash so I can be done sooner)