Yeah, the story/stories and characters are the actual meat of the game. It's not a space sim like Star Citizen or NMS, it's an RPG first and foremost, really.

Also, so far (~20 hours in) it's way less bland than Fallout 4. It's a way more of an RPG (I talked my way out of confrontations multiple times, sometimes even using my background and traits, when relevant). Sure, if you just keep landing on planets and going to the auto generated structures and scanning wildlife, it's probably gonna be quite bland. But there's way more actual content, way more actual quests that aren't just clearing out bandits/raiders. The space sim-y stuff, that's just there to sell the fantasy. Yes, you can be a bounty hunter or space trucker or whatever, but that content is of course going to be way more autogenerated, bland stuff. I'd recommend doing that stuff on the side, when you want a break from story heavy quests.

But even clearing out raiders is often waymore fun in Starfield, especially when it's in space. For example, I came across an abandoned zero-gravity casino space station that spacers (one of this games version of raiders and bandits) were in, while I was on my way to the space cowboy city, and that was a very fun fight.

Another time, I was heading back to New Atlantis when I noticed a symbol for a ship in the same system. When I went to investigate, I first got into a dogfight with another ship, disabled their engine and borded them, then I noticed there was some kind of heavy freighter they were raiding, so I docked with that. On that ship, the engines were funky and as they were turning on and off the gravity was going, too, so I was fighting my way through a ship where the gravity was constantly fluctuating, which then also factored into small environmental puzzles, like waiting for the gravity to turn off to go up an elevator shaft. Eventually got to into the vault the space pirates were trying to get into, and although I couldn't get all of it because I didn't have a high enough lockpicking skill (the new lockpicking minigame is also kinda fun, ngl), but I did pick up some contraband. When I then finally actually went to New Atlantis, the contraband was caught by the scanners, I was arrested and then forcibly conscripted to go undercover into the Crimson Fleet (the space pirates), although I could've killed my way off the ship they brought me to if I wanted. Then the contact to get into the Crimson Fleet was actually the same person that gave the orders to attack that freighter I found! (There was an audiolog, because of course.) Sorry for going off on a tangent, I just felt like it would illustrate my point better than just saying "it good"

I also probably have like 5 other quests in my quest log to go join some faction, some big factions, some small factions. And that's without even going to the cyberpunk city.

And so far I haven't had to follow a dog for 20 minutes in search of a chainsmoker, so that's already better than Fallout 4.