What they needed was a lot less empty planets and a lot more that looked populated (not occupied by a small outpost; populated, by a civilization).

The beauty of Skyrim (and I guess fallout, though I hated the guns so much I struggled to ever get into it) was that you could just wander if you got bored. You’d just point yourself in a random direction and see what popped out as interesting. Many of those places would be moderate sized cave systems that brought you out somewhere completely different, where you were free, again, to just pick a direction and explore.

It doesn’t feel like exploration to go to an empty map with a base that you kill everything in, then backtrack back to your ship every time.