I actually feel the opposite.

As an Elite DangerousEnjoyer, I appreciate the more or less “grounded in reality” setting that Bethesda created with Starfield. Most planets are giant, empty, desolate rocks or iceballs, which is exactly what one would expect from real life planets. And I suppose this may be a big reason why many people were disappointed. It seems that many expected the game to be “Star Wars Skyrim,” but Star Wars is very unrealistic with regards its planetary depcitions. Planets are varied and generally not shown to be mostly empty, desolate space rocks. Full world cities, jungles, magma, gas storms, etc. Likewise I more or less find the gameplay enjoyable, even with its annoyances (most of which are fixable with mods that are available right now).

However, I actually found myself very disappointed with the visual aesthetics of the game. When Bethesda marketed the game, they described it as “NASA-Punk.” But I suppose my disappointment comes from them failing to communicate what that meant to them, since it obviously meant something different to me.

When I first heard the term “NASA-Punk,” I became excited to see an abundant use of white and black, with copius amounts of shiny gold foil. I expected to see exposed mechanics and rocket piping. Basically, a mood board of NASA created technology from the beginning of NASA up until now. Ships inspired by the Lunar Landers, Lunar Rovers, etc. Bethesda on the other hand, seems to have created an aesthetic of “what would NASA look like 1000 years from now?” Since the two are so drastically different, you likely can imagine my disappointment at what I see as a weird, ugly aesthetic for many of the ship designer parts and space suits.