I think what you're noticing about on foot sections in modern space games is because merging that sort of experience with a space sim is truly the space sim's "final frontier", so to speak. It's the only part of an immersive gameplay experience that is yet to be executed as cleanly as the in-ship portion of a deep systems driven sci Fi space exploration game.
It's why Starfield is the way it is, they tried to conquer that frontier as well, and had to make a lot of concessions to do so and didn't have any prior experience in that sort of genre. I think it is safe to say that Starfield didn't succeed well enough or deep enough to be the definitive shining example of a space sim with equally executed space and ground gameplay styles (partially because it's not truly a space sim at all, more like an arcadey take on it )
One day a game will, and it'll be awesome, but it'll probably still be a while. Starfield showed that even if you throw lots of money and a professional team at it it's not a sort of game you can easily make.