In all honesty, understand it, Bethesda failed to deliver the promise & punch here, the game needed longer to cook, but I feel after the aqusition from MS/XB, they wanted the game out as soon as, to claim a huge win for XB as a whole, which ultimately led to Starfield being abit of a let down.
I’ll put it this way. No one is going to be talking about Starfield years from now the way they still talk about Elder Scrolls and Fallout
Starfield getting mixed reviews may be accurate, but for a Bethesda game to not reach positive status means it was a sizable failure.