TL;DR: If there is ever a written history of how far a gaming company can fall by ignoring its fans, dismissing what made its own games successful, and producing content that offers quantitatively less with more than twice the budget, size of team, and length of development time from their previous titles, Bethesda will have earned its own chapter, and its title will be "Starfield".

Bethesda's writing has been in decline for years. If you want proof of just how bad it is, watch a playthrough of Starfield. For the first time they had to create their own lore and world, and they failed. Miserably. It is lazy, a waste of the near infinite possibility the advances in technology and the breadth of the setting offered. Certainly this would have been helped by their other IPs, the acquired lore and world building of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, but without it, on their own two feet, they proved crawling is beyond them. The world building is asinine, the characters are shallow, and the lore is inconsistent when its not outright absurd.

And, like many, I've swallowed the poor writing and bad engine for many of their games and found enjoyment despite them. I've modded and appreciated the playgrounds their previous titles offered. But those scenarios allowed modding to enhance, whereas now modding has to mask and replace and, above all: fix. Especially so around the utter lack of exploration and environmental storytelling. There are thousands of planets to explore, but they are all the same outside of colors and environmental changes, and the latter are nothing more than an optional piece of information that you can choose to acknowledge, because even the most extreme settings require essentially no accounting for.

If you take the time to explore you will find yourself in one of the two-dozen dungeons available. And not just repeated layouts, but repeated loot, decorations, damage, enemy dialogue, etc. Not only are the same personal notes and situations presented again and again, but they are without any explanation as to how the supposed unique location also exists, in every detail, hundreds of thousands of times across the galaxy. It is an insulting lack of development and creativity around an element that largely defined previous Bethesda experiences, highlighted as their number is compared to the hundreds offered in every previous Bethesda game.

Perhaps the worst offense is how safe the game is with its alleged roleplaying. In a game whose entire premise is the ability to do it all again in a parallel universe, no significant consequence or choice is offered to the player. Starfield is the most on-the-rails game Bethesda has ever made, and the most on-the-rails game by any developer I've ever played that presumed to call itself "roleplaying". Factions don't care if you're a decorated member of their enemy. Anyone of even the remotest consequence is not only immortal, but cares not at all what you do beyond whether or not they will have a 'romantic' 'relationship' with you. And literally the only difference between one universe and the next are pointless changes inside a solitary indoor environment and dialogue options that speed along a few quests.

In other words: the reward for continuing is continuing slightly faster. Not to any destination or resolution, because there is none. No new content, interactions, changes in the world, relationships, revelations... nothing. It's a lifeless universe running on an engine that's been showing its age for over a decade. A clunky UI/UX and a watered down player experience that, in trying to make it accessible to everyone, offers no challenge as it shifts all the way to pointlessness. It's modded less than previous titles because, not only is the foundation that much worse, but Bethesda made modding more difficult via engine changes and delaying the release of its Creation Kit.

Starfield is shallow, repetitive, and boring. It is not worth your time or money.

Even installing the Star Wars Genesis Mod Pack does not make this a good game. Save yourself the money and time if that was your intention. The underlying base game mechanics are simply too tedious and can't be fixed by the extensive mod pack.

This is the first review I've ever written. I bought this Game at Launch I've played 15hrs. It committed the worst sin a piece of media can make. It's boring and repetitive. I've come across the same dungeon twice on the same world within in walking distance of each other. It is Not Fun