I made the same comment when I saw it was nominated. It’s Fallout 4 in space with both free base building (outposts) and grid base building (ships). The procedural generation of locations is reminiscent of Arena. The class system is a simpler version of Skyrim and Fallout 4. The story is cliche science fiction using mechanics from earlier Bethesda titles. The dogfights are decades old. The drudgery of running around forever for a simple objective hails back to earlier titles like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and similar Ubisoft map objectives.

I have no idea what Starfield innovated. It’s just like every other Bethesda game with some new things done better elsewhere. I am in the minority that love it because it is exactly what you would expect from the studio that’s been rereleasing the same game for over a decade.