Man, I hope that Andromeda’s and No Man’s Sky’s failures in the marketplace don’t kill enthusiasm for what they were trying to do. I don’t know who would take up the flag for the kind of huge, galaxy-spanning rpg that Bioware was attempting - CDPrrojekt could probably do it, but they’re tied up with Cyberpunk. I don’t think this is really in Bethesda’s wheelhouse, though there were rumors they were working on something like this back before E3.
Andromeda could have been saved, had there been the will to do so. I think about the awesome story-focused DLC for GTA4, that also added features and activities to the base game. But I guess it’s on life support, so we will have to pray to the gods of space exploration games to forgive us our trespasses, maybe grace us with something cool in a few years. In the meantime, there’s always indies.
Anyway, you mentioned rating Star Control 2 higher because you played it first and that’s basically the story with me and Starflight. Could’ve maybe gone the other way, but I had Starflight on my C64 back in high school, and I don’t think I had a system that could play Star Control until much later. Just couldn’t get its hooks in me the same way by that point. Still a great game though, made it onto my list.