The United Colony Vanguard intro mission is pretty good. The little history museum was well done with interesting art and displays, not taking too much time, but gave good context for the game. The flight simulator was fun and good practice. Swearing your oath in front of flags and stars. Even the voice acting for it was serviceable. It's almost as if they're capable of competent writing and decent gameplay in a cohesive vision, at least on a small scale.
In 8 hours I still don't think I've laughed or even smiled with the game, though (only at it). Its just got no soul, which is weird for a Bethesda offering. Maybe there just aren't enough good writers to supply demand from the entertainment industries? Or writers got pushed out of the studios in favor of more programming? At least Fallout games were often janky but made up for it with generally good writing.
Might want to play it a bit more. I'm at the game is truly massive, and yeah they're going to be some slower parts or goofy fetch quests, but if you interact with NPCs, you'll find some interesting little side stories and sometimes some pretty funny reactions. There's a feminist Debbie Downer in the bank on new Atlantis, and if you talk to her it's definitely written to be poking fun at that type of person.
I just started the infiltrate The crimson fleet quest, and Reddit terminal within the UC ship, and it was just a text email on the commanders computer, but it fills in the idea of why he's singularly focused on the mission. The game will fire you to have to go out of your way to explore the world, and if you do that you'll be rewarded.
I find that I start going out at doing a mission, and then suddenly I'm a few systems away engrossed in something else. There's just so much stuff to do, and it's kind of overwhelming, but I'm having a blast. Haven't run into any bugs whatsoever, but that might be an issue later in the game who knows. Haven't seen any of the weird glitching NPCs anywhere either. I know a lot of people had that problem in cyberpunk, and I never experienced that, so I guess maybe your mileage might vary.
I agree that the game kind of starts off a little slow but once you get your bearings and just start exploring and focusing on different quest lines, it really starts to open up. It's a perfect absolutely not, but I think it's one of their best showings so far, and with more DLC and mod support it'll be one of those games that I can go back to over the years. It's nice to know that I don't think I've even scratched the surface though, and that there's hours upon hours of content still out there.
Biggest gripe is the UI, but I've kind of gotten used to it. I think part of that is stupid console porting, but they've never been known for elegant uis to begin with.
I'd give it a bit more time, but who knows maybe it's just not for you. I'm having a very hard time putting it down. After remnant, bg3, and now this I haven't had this much fun with video games in a long time. They're all drastically different games, but I've been enjoying all of them, and I have three of those in a year span at least for me is pretty rare.
Sorry talk to text...