Morrowind had no guardrails or quest markers, but it had a good story and clear final goal that you learn eventually. No guardrails here mean that you can kill

Morrowind had no guardrails or quest markers, but it had a good story and clear final goal that you learn eventually. No guardrails here mean that you can kill anyone and make main quest impossible to finish, but it had a direction that you can choose to follow. Plus a ton of interesting side-quests. NMS lack of guardrails is "do whatever you want", story is lacking and only reason to progress "main quest" is to unlock certain things by doing the same thing over and over again: go to the system, scan the planet, investigate the anomaly, rinse and repeat.