Bethesda’s trend with their RPGs has been to focus ever less on the narrative and more on the systemic elements. I’m guessing the intent is to make something more replayable by “generating infinite content”, but while Outer Worlds hasn’t managed to grab me I think I prefer Obsidian’s approach of a more crafted experience with a bigger emphasis on characters and story events. An engaging narrative can also warrant revisiting; I reread books I enjoy too. Of course, narratives can be polarizing and due to the money involved in big budget games they tend to have any potential rough edge sanded off to appeal sufficiently to as wide an audience as possible. An overall bland but continuous experience also makes it easier to slot in additional content later, as paid DLC (a concept Bethesda pioneered after all).
I guess the other option ideally leads to the players working with the game to create their own narratives, but it’s a difficult balance to pull off. The systems in Skyrim and Fallout 4 felt too shallow to allow that kind of engagement, but I really enjoy the stories that have come out of Heat Signature for example. That does require engaging your players to think creatively, rather than numbing them.
My expectations for Starfield right now are basically “a more polished No Man’s Sky”, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
(one big problem here is the well-documented tendency of players to play in a very risk-averse way that tends to not require much creativity or engagement, like how everyone ends up playing Skyrim as a sneaky archer. Heat Signature doesn’t really become fun unless you pick missions you’re a bit under-equipped for. Doom 2016 does a pretty good job of pushing players to have fun, I think.)
