Rebecca wrote, "the problem with games that rely on procedural generation is that they don't always have the most interesting plots to keep me playing." I partially agree with that. This is why I'm one of CDPR's biggest fans: I think they strike the PERFECT balance (for my tastes) between open world RPG and tight story.
I also think that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of the best CRPG games ever created, largely due to the tight story and character relationships you are hoping for in Outlaws -- so there's good precedent for that in a Star Wars game. Skyrim and Fallout 3 were probably better overall, but only because they were much newer. The Witcher 3 is the first game I played since KOTOR that I thought was just a hands-down better RPG, independent of age.
However, with more dialog than Skyrim and Fallout 4 combined, and knowing how Bethesda tends to focus their dialog to plot-relevant speech, I think it's a stretch of an assumption that Starfield does not have a compelling story. Freedom to do things outside the story doesn't detract from the story. If the game provides a tight, compelling interactive narrative, I don't think it's fair to hold against it that there are ALSO other things to do, unless the criticism is really just on storage space that it takes up or how long you had to wait for the game to release, neither of which are really criticisms of the gameplay.
I also don't think it's reasonable to resent a game for providing too much value in terms of length. Yeah, I suppose you might see a 3.5 hour movie and say, "I wish it had only been 2 hours," but that's really a function of the story being told and generally indicates that the movie wasted your time. If it's a full experience that whole time, then length is not a problem. And open-world RPG's, unlike movies, let you go at your own pace. If you just want to focus on the main story and ignore the side quests, you can do that and crank through the game in a few dozen hours.
If you are saying you prefer casual games to epic open-world RPGs or just really like Star Wars games for all the lore, that's fine and fair, but that doesn't mean Starfield is not a good (or great) game for its genre.
It may turn out that Starfield is a disappointment -- not released yet, so we don't know. But I worry when reviewers criticize a game for giving players too much. That discourages game developers from building epic, massive, open-world RPG's, which happen to be my favorite genre.
Bottom line, IF Starfield delivers on what they have shown off, then being huge makes it the best value in gaming. Contrast that with the good Sony-exclusives: I loved some of the Uncharted games, but they are short little snippets of games compared to the big multi-platform games. Starfield, on the other hand, is a multiplatform-scale game as an exclusive.
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