Starfield has various elements that many other space exploration games have, I really don't see how only NMS becomes the sole comparison.
We've got Starbound, which featured space exploration, mining for resources, building outposts, hiring ppl to do jobs for you and doing jobs for, quests, etc.
Elite Dangerous: Space exploration, mining, quests/missions etc.
Space Engineers: Mining, making your own ship, creating outposts of your own, etc.
NMS at it's core is purely exploration, cataloguing and tiny fights with pirate NPC's. The game largely doesn't want you doing "illegal/bad" acts, or it sends the space robot cops on your ass 90% of the time, meaning the game in general just wants you to go around and mine/build bases and scan shit, and to this day, that still remains as one of the core pillars of NMS, and I still see folks on Steam forums still asking years later: "when is the game going to have proper combat?"...
A game like Starbound, from 2013 has more combat, more enemy NPC's to fight and a story than NMS does, because NMS is still preoccupied with procedurally generated worlds and telling it's players to scan shit 99% of the time, which is the complete opposite of combat, story and questing.
Folks are only making some comparisons to NMS due to, well, scanning and mining shit and flying through space, but that's honestly a narrow view of Starfield, and giving far, far too much credit to NMS, when other space games and RPG's have had similar mechanics like that before NMS even showed up. It honestly comes off like the kids who go "isn't that the dude from Fornite?", without knowing where the character originated from, because they thought Fortnite was *the* original game, when it's really just doing what others have done before and acts like a shell to host other characters and existing ideas (like building/crafting, which isn't new at all, and neither is adding characters from other games).
Mankind, in its arrogance and self-delusion, must believe they are the mirrors to God in both their image and their power. If something shatters that mirror, then it must be totally destroyed.
