Yeah, I played a decent amount and quit when I realized the first boss isn’t the lead-in to the story. I’ll come back when there’s more to it (especially since the Game Pass version is out of date).

Yes, but you’ll be able to experience the emptiness in new and more boring ways!

cutscenes of a ship taking off rather than an interactive first person view

Docking is more egregious. It’s not even hiding a loading screen, it’s just wasting our time so things like the CF/SysDef back and forth take longer.

and the same dull and lifeless NPC “AI” (I use that term very generously given recent advances) as we saw in older Bethesda titles.

It’s worse IMO, NPCs don’t seem to have schedules anymore. Which is kind of okay, my least favorite thing in Skyrim was shops being closed because there’s no “fast travel and arrive in the morning” option, but they feel a lot less alive when they stand in one place forever.

by locking many parts behind two different skills, Piloting and Starship Design

And upgrades locked behind levels, plus not having all parts at all shipyards (or even all parts of one brand at their main location).