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I haven't played the game, only been watching a streamer play it, but I think arguments like "it's boring on purpose" are dumb.
Trying to convey the vastness of space and how small you are seems also somewhat undermined, if you're just constantly fast traveling everywhere, and it seems like you're made out to be the most important person in the universe, since everyone is screwed without you, but that's just most games.
It’s dumb because that’s a fringe argument that I hear people reference as absurd more than I’ve ever encountered it. In fact, I have yet to see one person make that justification. I’m just assuming that argument exist somewhere because so many people have complained about it.
Starfield is yet another example of gamers getting outraged over a perceived reception, no matter how large or small that group actually is. I’m sure there are people out there making really bad defenses of the game, but the people who are angry at those people are much louder and far more numerous. 
Most people who are playing and enjoying the game are probably perfectly capable of seeing and articulating some of the issues, but just because a game has issues doesn’t mean it’s “literally unplayable“ or whatever people like to say now. 
I don’t know I just find these back-and-forth so repetitive. Every single game release you see this. The answer is Starfield is a perfectly fine, flawed game, that different people will react to differently. Just like any piece of media.
I spent all morning dunking on the game's issues and Bethesda's design philosophy with some friends... But ultimately I'm having a ton of fun with the game, glad I broke my rules and purchased it early, and finding it basically fulfills the things I wish both outer worlds and no man's sky had delivered on. It's a good game, and it is exactly what it says it is (as far as I know. I haven't paid a lick of attention to the ad hype): a Bethesda style open world rpg.
I don't really want to like it over the small studio titles that it clearly builds on, but them's the breaks. If you're looking for a Bethesda style open world RPG set in a sci fi world, then this game will probably be fun for you, and if you think all Bethesda style games are garbage and can't get past their very odd design choices, then why are you ranting about starfield since obviously it's going to be that.
Lotta people just love to hate Bethesda. Including me really... but this ain't it.
It’s game of the century in my book. These complaints are shallow. I spent 20 hours exploring and these complaints hold no weight. There is plenty, go find stuff. I have 2 huge ship’s just from exploring planets. I have full legendary gear. All from planet hopping.
Exploring planets is cool as fuck especially when you go across environments.
Moons are especially fun and hold all sorts of secrets.
If you find a note about a secret base, pursue it.
Bethesda did a good job. I have played SC and SB2 and while I like how they do space travel, the rest of their game sucks by comparison. Bethesda really knocked it out of the park.
Did they pay you to write this?
Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much?
Or am I insane?
I feel like im in Truman Show, noticing the facade crumble and all the streamers and reviewers acts like the game is fine.
I see streamers encounter serveral game breaking bugs and then instantly praise the game again.
The game is basically Bethesda trying to mask the limitations of their game engine.
I mean good for you that you like it but I spent 10hrs and then refunded (Thank god for Steam). Im not paying 100 bucks for Fallout 4 with space skin. I can not fathom how people accept this quality in 2023.
And for that price.
If someone is interested in my "shallow complaints":
It's not as open and "huge scale" as people seem to think it is. It's kind of "fake open" if that makes sense. You cannot get into your ship and fly 800m east to your mission. If you do that, a new instance is loaded and your mission is not there. You have to run those 800m.
The ships are cool but you don't need it. You just fast travel with a loadingscreen everywhere anyway. I saw the inside of my ship twice in 10hrs (not counting the cockpit view).
Navigating the menus are a nightmare. Inventory management is difficult.
Laziest intro I've ever seen. "Hello stranger, take my ship. No reason. Ok cool. Bye."
Very little improvement graphics-wise. The explosions are 2D sprites lmao. In 2023. For real. New Atlantis looks horrible.
Performance is shit. I get 40fps in towns with a "UFO rated" computer on userbenchmark. Nvidia card.
NPC's teleporting around, getting stuck everywhere halfway through floor, corpses flopping around, ships clipping through stations.
Gotta love how anyone who has a good time with a game is either a shill or has stockholm.
I pirated the game and won't have the funds to buy it any time remotely soon. I 100% agree with the commenter you responded to. It's a fun game, there's a lot to do and I've often been feeling like this game has the guts that 2077 was missing (and I had a mostly bug-free 100% playthrough before a lot of major patches. For me, patches have just been mod-breakers lol). I only bring up 2077 because of just how often over the last few days I've thought "they're accidentally delivering the promises 2077's marketing made". I remember when Night City was promised to have fully scheduled NPC routines (which doesn't really exist) but it's actually somewhat present and there's a quest that introduces it as a "necessary" mechanic.
I've been very pleasantly surprised with the faction and trait interactions. I classed as a space scoundrel who is wanted and I have parents - my parents show up in random pleasant places like the zoo, my space scoundrel or wanted trait I believe got me captured and now I'm undercover working to infiltrate and take down a space pirate faction. In my own time I became a space ranger who started working for a corp in Neon doing espionage. Oh and like the previous commenter said, I'd followed a secret moon base and became a notorious pirate hunter which I've decided to take up the mantle of, so I'm technically double undercover lol.
Last little thing on interactions, it's been cool that the news has minor reportings on the important things you do. After I found said legend and lived up to it I've been hearing about attacks on space pirates that I've done. Smaller questlines have meaningful NPC changes.
I have some counter-points to yours, but I do have gripes of my own with the game I'll list after.
"not open"
What you're trying to say is there's no sub-orbit flight. You only fly your ship in orbit or in deep space. As a byproduct there is no way to manually fly your ship 800m. What you can do for 90% of quests is go to the planet map, click a new landing zone and land closer, skipping any exploration the game is trying to encourage. (The 10% of quests I've encountered are gas-detection on colonies. Rescue quests I can fast travel, unsure about flight). They didn't really market that you could, and frankly while the idea of flying my ship above colonist settlements and open firing on them sounds awesome I see why it's not possible. They took Elite Dangerous and dropped the interactive transitions for docking and landing. We've been aware of this since it was announced so I don't really see the issue here.
Also there may be a lore reason they came up with, as there have been mentions of ships larger than certain sizes straight up just can't land on planets at all.
"ship aren't needed"
I'm going to say no, subjectively. You can fly quite a bit if you want to, it's just faster to plot courses and for less populated galaxies there's not much reason to stick around. For actual gameplay, ships to make a difference though. The default ship is a good start and moderately upgradeable, but it's nothing compared to fighting in a dogfighting ship. Dogfighting ships are quite useless for cargo transport though, so if you are trying to ship people you'd be hard pressed doing it with the default ship. In a galaxy you can travel to any waypoint you see, bypassing the map menu. There is a lot of menu-diving, and I'll list some issues I have with that in a bit.
"lazy intro"
I've seen a lot of complaints about the intro. To be honest, I don't agree. So you're a miner that finds a mystical space rock that makes you feel things, then some people happen to show up looking for a large dozen of them to unlock the secrets of the universe. Cheesy? I guess. I appreciated that it was much faster getting started and out into the open world than their other games (still a little on rails slow). If anything, I'd argue that it gives much more player freedom for imagination. In Fallout you're searching for a person and you have a dedicated goal. In Skyrim it's the same as the chosen one.
In Starfield you're vision from the magic rock could be entirely meaningless if you wanted it to be and never deal with it again. The fact that you were just a space miner with no background fits perfectly with the RPG genre and solves the issue that people have been complaining about for Bethesda for years (that they're not "true" RPG's). Meanwhile we get an actual blank slate with a decent story premise and it gets called lazy and boring. Fuck that man, the concept was fine and you can be whatever you want to be for once.
"graphics/performance"
Seems kinda odd complaining about graphics? Unless I'm tweaking for gains I don't FPS meter, just visual smoothness as a reference. 5800x3D and a 10gb 3080 on ultra save motion blur with RT, on medium. No DLSS mod or FSR. I haven't felt the need, as performance has been solid and stable - at least it's consistently the same in the same areas. It's a pretty game, but I wouldn't say crisp. Better than RDR2's TAA but worse than 2077's current state. Some spots have some fuzzing/film grain of some kind, might be an atmosphere effect since it doesn't seem present on all planets. Some areas are definitely lower FPS but on a variable refresh rate monitor it's not been noticeable in any negative extents. Low FPS has only ever been on planets/settlements, space and dogfights have been pristine. Performance hasn't ever gotten worse than 2077, which for me was ~25fps prepatches (sub the x3D back then). Neon and New Atlantis are generally lower fps than an indoor smaller map but no poor frametimes, no chugging or stuttering. It's just the difference between 165hz and 60hz. The only actual "lag" I have seen is NPC scripts, which sometimes after longer play sessions hang and can get a few seconds of desync. For one line, then it's fine again.
That said, I shouldn't have to need high end hardware to have a good experience with the game. I feel like that's a separate issue, though. The game has been stable, completely crash free, and performance is consistent across how it performs - small maps are consistently smooth and heavier areas are noticeably lower FPS but not in a bad way. I did mention this is a pirated copy, right? I'd expect to have an abysmal experience with performance and yet...
"clipping"
One barista started levitating up to the ceiling when I was ordering a coffee, stopped at the ceiling. Once or twice an NPC has been facing a different direction during conversation. Once in a while an NPC will be walking into a wall, when I've wanted to steal I've "pushed" NPC's and they just repath themselves and its fixed - though rescue missions do suffer from this a bit. With some 30+ hours of playtime (on save at least), I've not seen any ship clipping or hitting stations. I've been to some heavy fleet areas like UCS and pirate bases and they are all just normal?
Like overall, I have some issues in similar ways but I have been enjoying my time with the game a lot. Pleasantly surprised compared to what I had been reading online.
Comment to long, responding to myself below
To comment on a few of your points,
But yeah agreed on the technical aspects, except for new atlantis looking horrible. If anything looks borderline horrible for me, it's the borderline uncanny valley faces everyone has.
Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much?
Or am I insane?
Please for the love of god can we not turn beehaw (and lemmy as a whole) into YET ANOTHER space where people enjoying a game to whatever degree they please is somehow truly impossible to believe that you question your sanity??? Just learn how to have a conversation for crying out loud!
Did they pay you to write this? Are you forcing yourself to enjoy the game because you paid so much? Or am I insane?
No need to go for insults just because you disagree with someone. I love this game so far, it's been a great deal of joy. For full disclosure: I paid for the $30 USD upgrade package from the gamepass version of the game to get the early access and have not paid full price yet. If script extender mods don't work on the gamepass version of the game, I expect to purchase he game on Steam for whatever price it is at that time.
I don't disagree with you on several points, but that doesn't mean a it's bad game. As I already stated, I recommend the game and I feel it's a good game.
Here are some of my thoughts:
The ships are cool but you don’t need it. You just fast travel with a loadingscreen everywhere anyway. I saw the inside of my ship twice in 10hrs (not counting the cockpit view).
One of the things they said repeatedly during pre-release media is that the game has so many aspects to it that you can ignore entire parts of the game by design.
Don't care about ship combat? Then don't take ship combat missions, that's OK.
Don't care about outpost management? Then don't make outposts, that's OK.
Not having to use your ship very often is a feature, not a bad thing. I've taken several combat missions and transport missions. I've messed around with smuggling a bit. I've explored around in my ship and gotten several random encounters. It's a fun part of the game, but anyone who doesn't enjoy it isn't forced to go through it.
Navigating the menus are a nightmare. Inventory management is difficult.
This is probably my 2nd biggest complaint about the game. The UI design is, in my opinion, just not great to use on PC. It seems everything I want quick access to is about 2 menu levels deeper in than it should be...
Laziest intro I’ve ever seen. “Hello stranger, take my ship. No reason. Ok cool. Bye.”
Yeah, but this doesn't represent the entirety of the game. Many of the quest lines have me very interested in them.
Performance is shit. I get 40fps in towns with a “UFO rated” computer on userbenchmark. Nvidia card.
This is probably my biggest complaint about the game. That said: I agree that the graphics/performance is not great, but please do not ever use nor support UserBenchmark. They are a joke, and cannot be trusted to actually review anything.
Hardware Unboxed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaWZKPUidUY
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/userbenchmark-benchmark-change-criticism-amd-intel,40032.html
NPC’s teleporting around, getting stuck everywhere halfway through floor, corpses flopping around, ships clipping through stations.
I expect many people will tell you "It's a Bethesda game and it's to be expected," and they'll be right. But you're also in the right to keep calling Bethesda out on it. Giving massive companies a free pass on these things isn't ok.
That said, none of these glitches have broken the game for me. I've yet to had any game experience ruined by it. Most of them I chuckle at and then move on. If anything, I think it adds charm to the game. One of my favorite things to do in Skyrim was put pots on people's heads and watch them walk around, or to shout at them and watch their plates get stuck in a chair and vibrate around. (I'll refrain from commenting about certain Starfield-related shenanigans for spoiler reasons.)
Bethesda did a good job. I have played SC and SB2 and while I like how they do space travel, the rest of their game sucks by comparison. Bethesda really knocked it out of the park.
This. Just exploring the first POI after leaving the tutorial I thought to myself, "This is how SC, NMS, and ED should have done their ground FPS exploration and combat." The FPS gameplay is much better than Fallout 4/76, Bethesda improved that aspect a good amount. And with any Fallout/Scoll game, I love the clutter loot. I'm now 42 hours into the game, lots of new Bethesda style detailed POIs to discover and explore. People complaining about empty moons/planets are ignoring the hand crafted content and focusing on the unpainted mod canvas... or to give them a bit of a pass they have never played ED, NMS, or SC as those have lots of empty moons as well.
Game of the CENTURY? Come on now. There's defending a game you like, but that's a bit much.
Lol game of the century
I am confused by a lot of complaints about the game I've seen, namely "it feels barren", "id rather have 3 good planets over the 1000 procedural generated ones", and then theres the people with the same complaints they have every time bethesda releases something. I have seen only like 1 trailer for the game, kept away from all the press and whatnot and somehow I feel like I still had a better concept in my mind of what this game would be like than most others did? So many complaints I can just address as "it's a bethesda space game, and this is what it's supposed to be like".
Many people don't like fallout and elder scrolls, and that's fine, but if you dislike those games why buy this one? Especially why in the hell would you PREORDER this one?
And secondly a lot of people ive seen talk about this have obviously never played a true space game before. I've played no mans sky, elite dangerous, empyrion, heck I've played most of them and they are all barren, that is the point. And if bethesda had hand crafted these planets we would have maybe idk, 5 planets id wager that we could actually explore, which is the total opposite for what bethesda wanted to do here.
So many complaints of this game I just feel are "well yeah, obviously" that I'm struggling to find the actual issues in the game. My only thing that bugs me so far is how I can't fly around on the planets surface, and the lack of a dune buggy.
"So many complaints I can just address as “it’s a bethesda space game, and this is what it’s supposed to be like”."
Why do you have such an incredibly low bar for Bethesda in particular? Demand better or you help make the entire video games industry worse.
They're not saying a Bethesda game is supposed to be bad. They're saying a Bethesda game is supposed to be... a first/third person western RPG with exploration and looter-sometimes-shooter elements and a heavy emphasis on skill checks. That's been every one of their games since Morrowind besides FO76. Expecting different at this point would be asinine, especially considering Todd and Bethesda repeatedly said this was an RPG.
You're misunderstanding. At this point "Bethesda game" is its own subgenre, and many complaints about this game are complaints about the subgenre itself. If you don't like being the Big Special Hero, you won't like this game. If you want the game to have rich, detailed combat that stays challenging throughout, it probably won't be this one either
If you want a huge world with lots of curious little things to explore and more side quests than you can do in a lifetime, built on a backbone of a kind of flimsy story (imo not a terrible one this time) that you are mostly gonna skip out on to go do dungeon hops and loot accumulation, then you're probably golden with this. And by now, most of us should know what we're paying for, I think. As long as you expect and want what they consistently make, this game delivers very well
On top of that, the combat and general mechanics are just far better than the usual Bethesda offerings this time around. It's fun to fight in zero g. It's an absolute blast to disable an enemy ship and then board it. The side quests are legit quite fun and exciting, with NPCs I've found I really enjoy and want to see again.
As long as you expect a game that is like Bethesda makes, it's a very nice and fun one that delivers more than I had expected from them by a long shot. If you expected a deep, hardcore indie gem, you're going to be disappointed and also you're maybe kind of a silly person. It's a mass produced game for a large audience, that's the stick by which to measure it.
At this point “Bethesda game” is its own subgenre, and many complaints about this game are complaints about the subgenre itself.
Bingo, that's what I'm trying to say.
Feel like you're misinterpreting what I'm saying, that statement is not to excuse bugs.
Demand better
Bro I am pleased with the game? I am having fun and I think it's a good game, as the other guy who replied to you said my bar for this game has been either met or exceeded. I hold bethesda to the same bar as other devs, and people painting this to be as bad as the fo4 or f76 launches are just wrong from everything ive played and seen. Any bug I've had has been purely visual and did not hamper my gameplay, and in 20ish hours I've had one crash. And this is on linux even, which makes how stable the game has been even more impressive. Gameplaywise too I think it's great fun.
you help make the entire video games industry worse.
For the record I would like more games like this one. I am the target audience for this game, I enjoy it, and if more devs made games like it I would be happy.
My bar for their games is high and its been exceeded. I would be happier if it had every feature I can dream up but if I wanted a game that had an infinite scope and an endless development cycle I'd just pay $10k for a ship in star citizen and hope it releases before I die. Thankfully I'm able to enjoy a game made by one of the most lauded and successful video game developers in the world and not be a curmudgeon about it.
Not trying to be a dick, just seems like everyone else is. Don't buy it if you need x feature and it isn't there, maybe they will learn a lesson and make the game you wanted them to next time.
Well said, and yeah
Not trying to be a dick, just seems like everyone else is.
sums up how I feel about this game's reception so far pretty well.
Yeah I think it's less that people are setting unrealistic expectations for a Bethesda game, and more that people are getting fed up with being told they should be happy with all the faults "because it's Bethesda".
Bethesda gets a really weird pass in the gaming industry and when it comes to shallow content and bugs. I think a lot of that comes from the modability of their games, so that with mods and a few years of patches, the games often end up being a lot of fun - but the fact is that the games themselves, as released by Bethesda are usually hollow shells by comparison.
For instance it always irks me when people say Skyrim VR is the best VR game - you literally need a couple dozen mods just to make it function as an actual VR game (lack of 3d audio in a VR game is just unforgivable imo, let alone any actual physics interactions).
I think people are just starting to get fed up with Bethesda's business model of building barebones games and counting on modders to make it fun. And then people get further fed up when they say so online and get told things like "but yeah it's Bethesda, what did you expect?"
I do wish I had a ground vehicle yeah.
I spent five hours exploring Nesoi where my house is yesterday, largely so long because there were a few unique biomes to check out and then I happened on a random quest that had interesting stories and voiced lore snippets and things, and took me some time to complete. Also hooked into another off world quest that I'm not done yet but has been really fun.
I would put it on a very similar level to NMS, in that the world does get samey after a while... But there are biomes on the planet, so at least I can find mountains and deserts and things. Looking forward to whatever mods or dlc increase the baseline biodiversity on lush worlds but I think five hours contendedly exploring a single planet is a pretty good stat at launch to be honest. Plus the quests are actually fun and good and there's combat with more than one kind of enemy.
A lot of people seem to want this game to do poorly, half the comments complaining about it also say that they haven't played it yet.
Honestly, avoid Lemmy and Reddit for reviews on this game. The absolute vitriol it's gotten here has just pushed me beyond trusting any of them. (and yes, they all end with "I mean I haven't played it.")
I have played it. 8 hours in so far, it's fun. I won't say it's "redefining RPGs" for me or anything, but I'm having a good time playing around. To others here on Lemmy I am now the worst person on the planet.
Also avoid the Steam discussion forum. Awful awful place right now.
It's the same people that have been bashing Bethesda for years now, they don't care whether the game is actually good or not, they just want to bash the people behind it.
I'll play it for myself on gamepass and see what I think, discussion around it has been worthless here.
I mean, isn't it still only available to those who paid extra? That's probably why you see so many people wanting to discuss it without having played it yet...
"all these planet are boring"
Yeah, as if Mars and Pluto is interesting. People want this game to fail because it isn't a better game than the darling Baldur's Gate 3. And gamer has been like this for a while: either the game is 10/10 or it's shit/10, there's no between.
I remember the time when zelda botw came out and jim sterling gave it a 7/10,people went banana over that lol. Starfield and Witcher 3 may very well be a 6 or 7/10 game, and that's okay.
The point of a game is to be fun in some sense of the word, not to depict Mars as scientificly accurate as possible, unless it's Scientificly Accurate Mars Simulator.
If the planneta are boring, then the game about exploring those planets are probably failed at being fun, and that's kind of irregardless of what people want.
Personally I would like all the games to be good, for example.
People complaining about planets not having anything fun to do have never played Elite Dangerous.
Just the fact you're exploring a new planet, to me is a cool feeling.
I've had this same thought since Starfield came out. Go play ED: Odyssey and then complain about how plain and boring planets are.
You are all saying that both games have boring, procedurally generated planets. Sounds like both games were designed with boring elements people don't want. Just because ED is more boring, doesn't mean Starfield is good.
The point isn't that ED being boring makes Starfield good. The point is that space exploration is mostly boring, and ED exemplifies that well. If I wanted unrealistic space exploration, I'd just play No Man's Sky.
I guess there's an argument that boring space exploration has an audience. I just didn't think that overlapped much with Bethesda's audience.
There's ways to make places feel barren, open, unexplored and still be interesting. I've played several games that had sections that were essentially "empty" but still hand designed to be interesting. We don't need 1000 planets, we need good content.
One of the primary reasons people like Bethesda games is that they give players a large world to explore that's jam-packed with interesting things to see a do. If Bethesda abandons that and admits that majority of the content they expect players to interact with is going to be boring, procedurally-generated, then why should people play Starfield?
Bethesda isn't known for deep, complex stories. Their best writing is traditionally their side content with main stories panned. Their combat is pretty basic, but functional. Their RP is pretty sad and NPCs could be a lot better, especially these days. So it seems Bethesda has given away their biggest plus: an interesting world to explore.
The best part is, they already made a game with a gigantic world full of procedurally-generated content: Daggerfall, which is remembered fondly for a reason.
Funny you say that, Daggerfall is fondly remembered but only in spite of it's procedurally generated overworld. Daggerfall's openworld is extraordinarily barren, remarkably so. You literally will get lost if you walk more than 5 minutes from a town, and not in a fun way but because every direction you look is literally the exact same three tree and rock sprites and you lose sense of direction. Daggerfall's overworld is so bare and empty and large it actively encourages you to engage in the fast travel system with fleshed out gameplay mechanics like camping supplies and vehicles.
To chime in, I think a lot of this kind of discourse is just based on what you're looking for in a game.
In American Truck Simulator, one of the DLC's is the state of Wyoming, which is remarkably barren. It's the least populous state in the whole country, and many of it's "biggest cities" don't even top out over 100,000 people. If you look at the reviews for it, it's actually somewhat divisive. A lot of people criticize it for being "boring," but that's also how Wyoming is in real life, having driven across the state partially myself. I think a lot of this has to do what people come into the game expecting. Some want to enjoy the game as a truck simulator and Wyoming offers plenty of space for that. Some also want to enjoy the game via other formats, such as the scenery, and Wyoming doesn't excel that much in those areas.
My point being, I think it's just hard to make claims about this thing because it's all just subjectivity. I think if you make a black-and-white claim about this then you just aren't thinking very rationally. Some people will like it and some people won't. Such is life.
Bethesda game full of jank. Same as it ever was, Pikachu face.
That sounds like as good an excuse as any.
Who the Eff would expect planets to be like Disney World!?
"We could have made a game where there are four cities and four planets,"
Three planets and one gas giant (for now), Todd. And those probably have more diversity or non-boredness than your thousand planets.
A disclaimer: I havent played the game and probably wont for a few months to a year when its on steam sale so I'm going to just speak based on what the article is saying and experience with other games.
I think its a tricky balancing act to make when it comes to creating an open world game where you travel through space. Different games have approached it differently with some games opting to scale everything down super small and letting you suspend disbelief(like outer wilds) but that wouldnt work as well on a game like this. Other games go for the hub approach where your ship is a hub that connects you to different open maps on different planets. This approach also works in letting you travel the stars and lets the story do the heavy lifting of conveying scale, but it doesnt mesh with the bethesda open world style. Likewise it can also sometimes turn your ship into just a metroid style elevator and so instead of feeling how big the universe it you effortlessly fast travel across the galaxy. Other games fill the space by making big procedural generated never ending expanses, but that can be hit and miss and not really what a lot of people want in a game like this one.
I understand wanting to pad things out a little bit to prevent things from feeling toy like in the way that Outer Wilds did, but it does run the risk of just being boring and uninteresting and leave you wishing for a more "gamified" tighter experience or at least less openness and more zipping to the places that matter. That said if exploring is worthwhile it could make it less of a bummer. I think Wind Waker and breath of the Wild are good examples of this. Wind Waker's sailing was notoriously long and boring when it came out, however while most of the islands are small rocks, they all have something. Some secret, some rabbit hole leading to something interesting, a piece of heart, a chest of ruppies, SOMETHING. If you engage with it and mark your map along the way, and explore then the mostly empty map becomes a little more engaging.
Likewise Breath of the wild's map isnt full of little side stories and secret villages or anything so if you decide to go off into that distant peak it will usually be self motivation. That said the game does reward you every time even if it's not a huge reward. You will find ruins of some mysterious lost nation, you will find ruins referencing past zelda games, and shrines, and even a stupid little korok puzzle. The little gamified reward for exploring the area makes it less barren and worth exploring. So if it's more Wind waker island, or breath of the wild and less Mass Effect 1 I can see this empty areas working.