> Greentext

Really? 35 hours of great content?

Exactly what parts of Starfield struck you as great?

The major city locations. The major factions/plots. But specifically, I was referring to the approximate amount of hand-made content from previous research. If you don't think handmade Bethesda content is great, well obviously don't buy it like I wouldn't buy another Witcher title.

The number of loading screens just to go from point A to B for a fetch quest is probably the worst of any open world game…ever.

Not my experience. It's worse than any seamless game, but I found the loading screens and loading times to be pretty reasonable compared to other games. Specifically, I noted that loading times were shorter. And as much as people bitched about the "sequence" loading screens, they're a whole lot nicer than the black-screen-with-image I was used to in the past.

The story is mediocre, the voice acting is meh, the gameplay loops are extremely repetitive.

Now you're going full-subjective. As my college English professor used to remind us, "I didn't like it" is not a real metric for quality. I don't agree the story is mediocre. I don't agree the voice acting is meh. And I don't agree the "gameplay loops" are repetitive. Unless you choose to stick with the intentionally repetitive content.

And “you can play 35 hours without hating it” as the barometer of whether a game is satisfactory sells yourself and your time short

Actually, my metric was "35 hours of GREAT non-procedural content". YOUR metric is 35 hours without hating it. It may help to remind you that I also enjoy the procedural content. But a lot of people are whining that the whole game is procedural, despite having comparable hand-made content to any other Bethesda game.

If you don't like Bethesda games, you shouldn't be complaining about Starfield, the same way I don't complain about some fancy wine sucking (I don't enjoy wine). If you DO like Bethesda games, your critiques above probably apply to them more than Starfield. Same issue. This is a good "wine" for people who like "wine".

You do yourself and the devs disservice minimizing or dismissing complaints and only do the execs a favor.

I'm doing myself and devs a disservice by loving a game because it's the game I was looking for and the game I was promised? Do you even hear yourself? When I have a hankering for Whiskey, if someone puts a glass of Macallan 25 in front of me, I'm not going to bitch. I'm going to enjoy it. No matter who I'm doing a disservice because it's not a Budweiser