Can you play starfield while mostly avoiding the space cowboy stuff?
I already disliked all the references to US history in Fallout 4. To me, cowboys feel misplaced in a science fiction universe. It's just personal preference though. But the question stands: are large parts of the main story related to the cowboy characters, or does it work mostly without?
Starfield, like a lot of sci-fi, compares the early days of space travel to the old west. With that said, at close to 30 hours in my first character, there hasn't been a single time I've engaged with the cowboy stuff. It's largely attached to one of the two biggest factions, which is a group I haven't engaged with at any point so far, with one exception being an encounter with one member of that faction as part of a brief, radiant quest.
So yeah, you can completely avoid it! Happy gaming!
Yeah, I would hope someone would some day compare it to similar events from other countries in other parts of the world. But as long as many major game companies are based in the US, that probably won't happen.
Hard agree honestly - as an Aussie, American exceptionalism tires me. For what it's worth, there is The Expanse, that compares colonisation of other worlds more to British colonisation (and Roman, for that matter) if that interests you