The current Steam reviews are mixed and a lot of them are very detailed so I'll make this as short as possible.

Bethesda is most well known for their rich game worlds that are a joy to explore and just get lost in. When playing Skyrim, even after all these years, I still frequently find something I didn't know was there whether it be a cave that was tucked away somewhere or a little piece or lore that I didn't notice before. Starfield however is not anywhere as detailed as Skyrim and it stems from the basic design of the game which relies so heavily on fast travel systems that you are only ever punished with wasted time for trying to explore anything. The planets are not hand-made content instead they are procedurally generated and then "touched up" with hand-made content which means that if you explore the panets in full you'll just be seeing the same pieces of content that are copy-pasted in. This wouldn't be so bad if there were a large breadth of hand-made pieces to see but sadly they only have a few dozen large bases and a bunch of random crap thrown in for good measure. I think this game ultimately just should not have been made by Bethesda since the strongest aspects of their games are exploration and characters which are both very poorly represented here.

TLDR:
2/10
Empty planets of emptiness, sterile uninteresting design and bland characters

Update 6/14/24
Mod support is officially out and Bethesda have shown us again that they have no clue how to price a simple quest mod. That said, now that mods are available I've been having more fun with the game by adding every star wars mod I can find, still it's a bit sad that the best way that I've found to enjoy this game is to turn it into a franchise that actually has an interesting design aesthetic. Still no fix for the empty planets but I've seen some interviews that suggest Bethesda is planning on doing more with planets as new expansions come out.

Updated Score
3.5/10
Mods are here officially so at least we didn't get Fallout 76'd again. Waiting for Shattered Space DLC to release later this year to hopefully be wowed and revise the review.

The current Steam reviews are mixed and a lot of them are very detailed so I'll make this as short as possible. Bethesda is most well known for their rich game worlds that are a joy to explore and just get lost in. When playing Skyrim, even after all these years, I still frequently find something I didn't know was there whether it be a cave that was tucked away somewhere or a little piece or lore that I didn't notice before. Starfield however is not anywhere as detailed as Skyrim and it stems from the basic design of the game which relies so heavily on fast travel systems that you are only ever punished with wasted time for trying to explore anything. The planets are not hand-made content instead they are procedurally generated and then "touched up" with hand-made content which means that if you explore the panets in full you'll just be seeing the same pieces of content that are copy-pasted in. This wouldn't be so bad if there were a large breadth of hand-made pieces to see but sadly they only have a few dozen large bases and a bunch of random crap thrown in for good measure. I think this game ultimately just should not have been made by Bethesda since the strongest aspects of their games are exploration and characters which are both very poorly represented here. TLDR: 2/10 Empty planets of emptiness, sterile uninteresting design and bland characters Update 6/14/24 Mod support is officially out and Bethesda have shown us again that they have no clue how to price a simple quest mod. That said, now that mods are available I've been having more fun with the game by adding every star wars mod I can find, still it's a bit sad that the best way that I've found to enjoy this game is to turn it into a franchise that actually has an interesting design aesthetic. Still no fix for the empty planets but I've seen some interviews that suggest Bethesda is planning on doing more with planets as new expansions come out. Updated Score 3.5/10 Mods are here officially so at least we didn't get Fallout 76'd again. Waiting for Shattered Space DLC to release later this year to hopefully be wowed and revise the review.