There seems to be a general hankering for.... something where you can acquire/buy/build & fly your spaceship, walk around it, modify it, go to anywhere you like and still have a Skyrim-esque experience. Starfield made it seem that it was all of this, a vibrant cross of Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous. They were careful with footage that they showed.
I haven't played it myself, but it seems to me to be Fallout where you can choose to go to a new map whenever you'd like, and take your base with you to the designated base place for each map.
So, to answer your question, as I understand it, there was a careful setting up of expectation with little clarifications for plausible deniability
Mouse space control(and maybe 360 controller), load screens for planets to space and back, no true flight from points, and basic inside for the ship. Load screen to get on and off.
There are no load screens in Star Citizen.
Anywhere.
Except for when you first enter the game world.
In Elite the only load screens are between stars, and those are masked with the warp effect.
I have played a little of Starfield, but honestly, I get better texture quality in modded Skyrim. Feels very Fallout-esque, with no pretty faces. The character creator designer apparently is some overweight, not so attractive zoomer or millennial, so they did not want it possible for a player to create beautiful faces.
