Here again, this is just their ambition falling short due to laziness. He talks about the majesty of feeling like an explorer as if he never played Elite which, while not a perfect game, nailed this feeling absolutely. Especially after they added the ability to land on planets and mine space rocks to trade in for space doubloons to buy better space lasers for your space ship.
There are half a dozen things they could've just copied, let alone imagined for themselves, to make Starfield feel like an actual exploration game.
Didn't they see this coming?