Be Kind Rewind
Dumbfuck!
The only thing that captures the scale is Space Engine and that's not a game. I was going to start a thread about this topic since I already accurately and objectively reviewed Starfield through start screen physiognomy but this forum is too faggy for me to bother with that, you get the content you fucking deserve. For you I'll mention some highlights though, even if the genre is mostly a pie in the sky dream.
In terms of technology No Man's Sky is the best effort we've seen in decades and that was made by a small indie team that previously made shovelware titles for the iPhone. There's zero niggers in NMS and in the era of Blackrock games it can't be overstated how much that does for a game. The only problem is that there isn't much to do in a space that big and not much in terms of narrative to uncover. You can land on a planet and it never stops being impressive how the game streams in more detail as you enter into orbit, watch the space dinosaurs, collect some resources and then blast off to space again for interstellar piracy. Like Elite though there's not much of a context beyond the scope of the game, which makes the experience fee morel like a bland tech demo more than an adventure.
One of the pioneers of the genre, Starflight, actually had it down and was in some sense a mix of a smaller exploration game like Outer Wilds (one of the best science fiction games ever made) with the scope of NMS. That was in 1986 and the game had more seamless landings than Toddtard could achieve with Gamebryo mods. With a mystery plot and a breadcrumb trial of things to find on planets, dynamic aliens, and the trading from Elite to fuel your journey it was not just one of the earliest efforts but also one of the best. It got a direct sequel that improved some parts of the experience, and a forgotten spiritual successor titled Protostar. Star Control 2, a semi-spiritual successor that's more casual and feels smaller is the game more likely remember though.
The thing about scale is that most games focus on a part of the fantasy of space, you might get a Star Wars like dogfight game and since that's focused on a couple of ships shooting at one another as if it was aerial flight combat it can't get much of a sense of scale or scope across or what it would entail to go to space. Or you might get the rare RPG (Starfield isn't one) that uses the setting more for flavor than anything else, planets being like Star Trek painted backgrounds and foam set dressings instead of something you engage with. You don't actually need to go beyond our solar system to really experience the scope of spaceflight. One of the Whitest game ever made, Shuttle: The Space Flight Simulator from 1992, will make you dread space even before liftoff. You want your brave little boat? You got it.
On the note of technology and to rub it in how bad Starfield is I'll conclude by mentioning that there was a game for the Amiga and Atari ST that featured a fully open solar system with seamless landings and liftoffs and it was more or less made by a single person. Mercenary III: The Dion Crisis will give you a sense of scale, even now in 2023. Paul Woakes, the creator of the game, passed away in 2017, but he will be remembered as someone that showed that a single person can make a more impressive game on an Atari ST than however many hundreds of retards they got on the jewish owned slaveship they call Bethesda could with the cutting edge PC hardware and latest gen consoles.
