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
