I think Starfield on it's best day, would get a 96-98.
Final Fantasy XVI on it's best day would get a 93-94. And obviously XVI fell short of that overall.
XVI could have, and frankly is a fantastic Final Fantasy game, but it was never going to change how people think of games. It just doesn't have the scale or the budget for that. Maybe if XVI had a huge massive open world, and had an absolutely amazing way of interfacing with the story or other NPCs.
I think unless something went terribly wrong, Starfield will do better. Something could go terribly wrong, but that would be beyond surprising after the delays and the confidence Bethesda has been showing. I think something fairly absurd would have to happen. Something like 99% of the game is inaccessible at launch because they're still working on fixing some issues. I think something of that scale would be necessary for Starfield to do worse.
If you look at Red Dead Redemption, GTA V, Breath of the Wild, for a lot of these games there is a ton of depth with how you interact with the world. Whether you like those games or not, they have a lot of depth. Same thing with Skyrim all the way back in 2011. Tons of depth, with quests and having a persistent world; that frankly very few games live up to that even today. Elden Ring wasn't the craziest game depth wise, but at the very least I think it changed how a lot of people interacted with Souls games.
I don't think XVI would ever have been that game. Starfield on the other hand, probably will be. I think the game has an extremely strong chance of living up to Skyrim's legacy.
Of course, something could go wrong. Something might be unexpectedly broken, or unexpectedly shallow.
But I really doubt it.
