I think the fundamental problem is that people had different expectations for a game set in space, both because Bethesda stoked them (all of that talk of having the idea decades ago / first new franchise in however many years / Microsoft bought the company just to get it as an exclusive / etc) and because after No Man's Sky people kind of expected that with their budget / resources they would manage to fix that game's problems and create something richer + more seamless.
In retrospect, if they'd simply sold it as "Skyrim in Space," admitted to the limitations up front - same underlying engine, limited amount of variety to procedurally-generated content, loading screens instead of seamless takeoff/landing, etc - and not pretended that it was something new, the response would have probably been much more uniformly positive.
I don't get it.
People wanted another Bethesda game.
They got what they wanted.
I said in 2008, after playing the first Fallout game by Bethesda instead of Black Isle: "Only Bethesda could manage to make a post apocalyptic prostitute boring."
They've always been boring, they've always had ugly character models, and the writing has always been bad. You get what you paid for. A Bethesda game.
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