Sure Todd, lol
I’ve flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this…
Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.
But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they’ve built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.
I believe they’ve left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.
“New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99”
That’s 100% going to happen.
So far, Starfield is exactly like Skyrim in space to me. There’s as many carefully crafted cities, and quite a few carefully crafted locales. There’s just a lot more space in Starfield (estimated about 500x more. Skyrim is 15sq miles, and those 1000 planets are each a couple square miles ingame). Sounds like there may be less hand-crafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, but that’s hard to tell.
I’m definitely not finding Starfield to be claustrophic. On the contrary, a bit agoraphobic.
I think there’s definitely more handcrafted content in Starfield than Skyrim, there’s also tons tons more dead space with nothing at all.
Some folks say there’s only about 25 hours of handcrafted stuff. I’m not late enough in to know for sure.
Are you certain that you know what Agoraphobia is? Tip: it is not the opposite of Claustrophobia.
I had agoraphobia growing up. I know exactly what it is. And I had moments of it exploring the planets. I found myself hugging to keep buildings in range and not wanting to stray out into the great wide open. For some odd reason, I got more of that in Starfield than in NMS.
I’m also still fairly early into the game, so perhaps I’ll spend more time indoors than I have so far.
EDIT, also, it kinda is the opposite of claustrophobia in some ways. There are some overlaps and nuances (both fears sometimes include fear of crowds). I had a grandparent with really bad claustrophobia who never used an elevator in her life. Ironically, we could relate on a lot. But they were still opposite issues.