The side quests definitely were also lacking. Like, I know there’s only about 4 archetypes of quests (fetch, escort, kill and checkpoint) that you can really do, but you make them interesting with the story and reasons for doing the thing. Starfield really just made a majority of quests “go get this mcguffin because we need mcguffins,” with nothing really cool or interesting about it.
DF was 100% designed around telling a story using RNG. Game is like a mad lib. Starfield didn’t go that far (most games don’t). I actually do not ever expect AAA games with procedural generation to do more than just give you endless repetition over randomness that generate compelling and unique “stories” the way DF or RimWorld do.