I mean yeah, that's cool in No Man's Sky. I just don't think every single game must be exactly the same. Mass Effect is one of the most loved space RPGs of all time, and it doesn't do that. I can still play Mass Effect in 2023 and just because No Man's Sky did something cool, it doesn't retroactively make me hate the other way its done. I just don't think we look at gaming the same at all. I can't even imagine the mindset of someone that is fine playing a space game in 2017, and then No Man's Sky comes out in 2018 and suddenly everything is trash that doesn't do that one thing from. I'm fine with a variety of approaches. Starfield was in development for longer than 2018, so even if they literally wanted to copy their game it was probably too late, and we all know their engine has never done this. Just seems like you would rather this game not even exist since it was never going to even attempt to do what you're bringing up.
Obviously.
I've replayed ME Trilogy recently, and again, they are very different games with very different proposals compared to Starfield
ME (specially 2 and 3) are very linear games. When you go to a planet, you usually get shit done. With the exception of those procedural generated ones in ME with nothing to see, when you land on a planet you usually get some meaty story progression with cutscenes and etc., you spend hours there and there alone.
In Starfield, in most missions you gotta jump to a planet, talk to person A, then jump to planet B, talk to person B, then go back to planet A to finish the mission with person A. It's tiresome.
And again, it's all about what the game intentions were. ME is a linear game, while Starfield was meant to be an exploration game. So the presence of loading screens in both games have different weight.
An open world game should be as seamless as possible, so the player feels compeled to explore and find stuff. Thats why you rarely fast traveled in Bethesda or Rockstar games, 'cause you may get some sidequest while going to your objective, a cave that you have never seen before, or a new NPC.
There's none of that if you are jumping around to finish missions. And even if you dont, there's also none of that, so you might as well jump around to save your time.