Yeah there are some boneheaded tech debts or management decisions in terms of "immersive experiences" with Starfield. For me seamless planet/space transitioning is a big one. Seeing other games do a full walk up, take off, go to orbit, travel/fast travel and then re-entry to landing on surface and exit to walking again is a drawcard. lacking this puts a dent in Starfield's experience roster for sure.
There's more to Starfield though, I'm only a few hours in and already feel bamboozled by the sheer freedom and variety of what is present. Just gotta fuck around with things and find your own path, therein lies the journey and goal.
Another thing that's kinda nagging at me in Starfield is the moment to moment gameplay of exploration, I thought they'd give us more things to do. For example why is the scanner of such limited use?
NMS understood that something simple like scanning can turn the mundane into something interesting. There were tons of things to scan at all times which you can learn about and log those things. It's not the most exciting thing but it gives you something to do. In RDR2 we can take pictures, find animals, hunt, eat etc at any time. We can rob, steal, loot etc
Starfield wants to be this kind of game but they totally botched this aspect. A planet only has several types of rocks to mine, the scanner can't scan much of anything whether on planet, in space or inside buildings (other than highlight lootable objects). Planets seem to be too barren in that, even if there's no actual life, they shouldve still given us stuff to do and some sense of progression/accomplishment? I truly don't understand how Bethesda botched this basic design principle.