For me, it’s the vast expanses of procedurally generated nothingness in Starfield that turns me off the most, especially combined with the menu-based fast travel heavy way you get around.
The magic of Bethesda games comes from their handcrafted open worlds, always full of things to see and explore and get sidetracked by. Its the feeling that kicks in when the horizon first opens up after you exit the sewer/vault/customs office and you realize that you can just pick a direction and start walking and you’ll come across something interesting.
Starfield doesn’t do that. You can’t just pick a direction and go, it’s all fast travel. And if you’re down on a planet you can, but there is no magic to be found because it’s all procedurally generated emptiness between copy-pasted points of interest.
In their ambitions to have a bigger scope than ever they sacrificed the very thing that made their games so compelling to begin with.