I mean, Mass Effect is a fairly linear, non-open world game. It's also an old one, with limitations of the game built more than a decade ago. TOW isn't an open world game, either, and it's AA. For Bethesda to maintain its sandbox design and for the world to feel big, I've always thought manual space flight was necessary, so that space serves as the open world connecting the planets.
There have been about a gazillion hints that manual flight was in the game. The game's name being the first clue. "Han Solo simulator: you get in the ship, explore the galaxy, have fun", "Space travel in our game is dangerous" (how is it dangerous if it's a loading screen?), Crimson Pirates being a joinable faction (how can you be a pirate if you can't do the pirating?), the ship in the teaser having indicators for weapons and shield, Vasco fixing the spaceship on the concept art, dozens of concept art of spaceships in space, and so on and so forth.
"The biggest, most epic science fiction thing you can imagine" was unlikely not to feature space prominently. I know Todd gets carried away sometimes and exaggerates, but even he wouldn't call Starfield that if the game were just repeating things done in RPGs from the beginning of the century without doing new, exciting things never done before in RPGs.