What you've described about ER definitely resonates with me, and is something I am starting to hate with modern games, the fact they they're so damn long and don't seem to respect your time. It's even worse when they have endless cutscences and exposition like Starfield, it's almost arrogant for a video game developer to think they can create stories on par with movie or television writers.
I know the market is partly to blame for some of these trends, because low-iq gamers insist that longer games are "better bang for your buck". This is obviously incorrect because it doesn't factor in quality over quantity let alone the replay value of games that can be shorter. The reason shorter games have higher replay value is that they aren't such a massive commitment of your time and energy, and can be beaten in less than a week, or perhaps even a single weekend. Most modern games have too much pointless padding, time wasting, and grinding mechanics while often lacking in soul or polish. I'm much more in favor of shorter, linear games which are very much out of fashion, but I think of games like Metro 2033 or Metroid Fusion, which are 100% linear but have insanely high replay value and are immensely enjoyable prove otherwise. Shorter, linear games don't feel like such a grind and don't make you constantly have to stress out about keeping track of all the side quests and areas you need to keep track of, instead letting you fully immerse yourself in the gameplay and the world in a directed experience that polishes and controls every single experience you have.
This isn't to say the open world format is bad, Metro Exodus and Stalker are great examples. But I think if you're going for this long, open ended format it needs to be top-tier quality without padding or excessive grinding, which 99% of modern games fail to do.
