realistic, at least with the current limitations on hardware and personnel. I'm not sure any open world space RPG will ever feel the way people want them to in that regard. It's either make it open world and empty, or linear with the ability to actually craft a good story line and interesting world, like Mass Effect. Starfield kinda tried to do both, and failed at both.

The idea of being able to fly to any planet in space and have it be interesting and engaging is far fetched, but for some reason, gamers have this idea in their heads that that's how it should be. No Man's Sky fell into this trap, and it's taken them years since release to make a good game because they finally decided that good focused content is much better than bland infinite content.