After playing about 4 hours, I've had an epiphany... Brace yourselves guys, this one is a doozy...
Starfield is a Bethesda game... in space.
Depending on who you are, this is either exactly what you were hoping for or exactly what you were afraid of
First of all, the PC port seems okay except for a few issues. It has a lowish FOV with no way to increase it, they shipped it without raw mouse input and FSR sucks balls. These things we'll need to fix externally.
The character creator is super indepth. Not something I usually enjoy in games but I thought I'd give it a go in this one. Didn't last more than 60 seconds. Just moved sliders around and the only thing I chose properly was eye colour. It's good for those who do love character customization though.
I was wondering how they would start the game. Every Elder Scrolls has you starting out as a prisoner, every Fallout has you in a Vault. How would they do it here? I think the start was okay in this one. The only thing I found super corny is how you are just given a ship to fly around in. That was mildly ridiculous from a narrative perspective.
I've done the first bit of the game and reached the first city. It looks quite nice. They lifted this system from Mass Effect 3 where you get side quests as you walk past NPCs having conversations and you overhear what they're talking about. Don't think I'm a huge fan of this. It was barely acceptable in ME3 because the spaces in that game were quite small but here the city is massive and it's entirely possible you can miss out on quests if you don't go somewhere. Not a big deal but yeah, I wish it wasn't like that. Although some of the side quests seem designed specifically to take you around the city itself and get a chance to explore it.
I'm also somewhat ambivalent on the skill system so far. You can invest skill points that you earn into traits but you have to complete a challenge with any particular trait to be able to level it up further. For example, I chose persuasion to be able to talk my way into getting things done. Now I cannot level it up further until I have successfully passed a certain number of persuasion checks. Except, my odds of passing a persuasion check increase as I put more points into the skill. This seems a little... cyclic and I hope it's balanced well. Because it's entirely possible you reach a point where you cannot pass any persuasion checks because your skill is too low and you cannot level up the skill because you cannot pass persuasion checks.
I also have some doubts about lockpicking and planet resource scanning but I'll figure it out along the way.
Already seen a few bugs. That robot that follows you around can make a mess of cutscenes because of no collision. I've also seen people talking to me while they're walking backwards away from me. Two separate guards have literally just floated upwards into the sky. Yeah.
The game seems good otherwise. Looks quite nice aside from FSR fucking up the IQ. They've put more effort into space flight and space combat than I thought they would. It feels like an upgraded version of Freelancer combat. Can't help but make comparisons of this game with Star Citizen in terms of what both are trying to do and what compromises Starfield makes to actually ship a game versus the kind of no compromise philosophy of Star Citizen ensuring that it will never be a fully realized product.
It seems fun so far. I've basically halted the narrative to do side quests around the city so I haven't met any of the main characters yet. But yeah, I'm enjoying it.