Regarding the lifelessness argument: one of my favorite and most played games ever is space engineers, which is essentially a Minecraft like sci fi sandbox in a largely procedurally generated map.

The game has no concept of npcs in the expected sense, the only real pve component are randomly spawned hostile vessels. There are no cities or inhabited planets, no actual story. Actual planets and moons are maybe a dozen overall, everything else is procedurally generated asteroids. The physics are only a rough approximation to real life.

And still, the game has hooked me for literally thousands of hours, simply because I can actually do shit. Once you are loaded into a map there isn’t a single loading screen to deal with. Piloting your ship is wholly your responsibility and you do it from start to orbit to wherever you want to go. And you can actually go anywhere you want, no railroading or handholding period. You are fully in control at all times.

Even just taking off in a random direction in space is fun: What might happen? Find a resource rich asteroid and make a mining station? Encounter a pirate fleet and get into a firefight? Accidentally slam my fuel tank into an asteroid, causing me to lose my fuel? Do I freeze to death in space or do I chance into an asteroid with more?

It lacks almost everything starfield has, on paper, but is still miles ahead as a game about exploring space.