So...not really. Bethesda haters overstate how bad it is, Bethesda lovers ignore how mediocre it is. If you're into it, you're into it. But more than likely you won't be so unless you already have Gamepass it's probably best to pass on it.
The game is absolutely as bad as people make it out to be, if not worse. Fallout 4 exists and does everything Starfield tries to do but better, that's the real killshot here: If F4 didn't exist and the game released maybe 6-8 years ago, then we could simply call it "mediocre". Now, in 2024? No, that's just straight up garbage. The game got an appropriate amount of pushback and the redditors who like it weren't bullied enough. If this was a small indie game, then maybe it wouldn't be as hated, but it's a triple A console exclusive*(also available on PC) so it's treated as such. Note that Outer Worlds didn't get nearly as much hate because people knew it was a smaller sized game with less content, so it was merely ignored by most people rather than becoming a sideshow in a carnival like Starfield has.
So did the update with the vehicles even get released yet? There is no way that wasn't cut content, so I don't see what's taking so long to re-implement it. Not that it's gonna help the game, it will make it arguably worse since more players will notice how dead/small the biomes are before they hit the "go back to your spaceship" invisible wall(maybe 5-2.5 minutes to reach now vs 10 it normally takes on foot). I bet it will be worse than vehicles in Frontier, to make the situation even more humiliating. Hell, not even reskinning Power Armor in the forms of mechs will help it now, there is genuinely nothing new in this game that other Bethesda games haven't done better except for MAYBE ship crafting(which countless other games do better). Why bother coming back as an existing player or buying the game at this point in time if you're a new player?
The lack of evil or even morally grey companions really hurts role-playing here.
Very rarely do I play an outright evil PC but pragmatic mercenary is an archetype I run often in Bethesda games and that's flat out impossible here.
All the human followers have the morality of a good aligned paladin.
Steal - Lose affinity
Start fight - Lose affinity
Murder someone- Lose affinity
Mean dialogue choice- Lose affinity
Ask for extra reward- Lose affinity
They are comically righteous, at least in Fallout 4 if your sole Survivor was more of an asshole you could run Cait or Strong, here you have to run either the boring robot or go it solo.
I think it's very telling that these are the only "real" companions in the game. It either shows how unfinished the game is if only the "good" ones were made and the rest were scrapped, or how delusional Wokethesda has become if they genuinely think there is any moral nuance between any of them. The snake lady is the funniest, you would think she would be a ruthless, a-moral merc or zealot type but she's the same soft urbanite as the rest of the Constellation, and will cry just as easily about almost everything you do(or constantly ask you to have a talk when you're in the middle of a quest about her feelings, like it's a therapy session). It's like seeing a Middle Easterner or Eastern European or someone else from a rather conservative culture come over to California and get turned into a far left activist/degenerate gooner/troon or fag within only a few years there.
Anyways, there is an alternative of sorts: Robot exists and so does the Adoring Fan but apparently you can actually get the generic crew members to follow you as companions as well. They don't offer much dialogue or have any quests like the "proper" companions do, but I would consider that a bonus rather than a flaw with this writing. If you want companions, it's actually recommended to not take the ones that Constellation forces on you and just hire the generic ones you can find across various planets instead, who are for the most part very neutral and just do their job without much fuss(altho it is funny how one of them is an actual troon).
