I gotta give Elite Dangerous credit. For all it's misgivings, it did about as well as can be expected as far as scope and size. Games like Everspace and Mass Effect tend to be too small and/or don't have enough exploration. No man's sky is plenty big with exploration, but it's not defined, and lacks certain interactions. It's cartoony looks don't help either.
Elite Dangerous is a 1 to 1 replication of the Milky Way Galaxy. While No Man's Sky just keeps regenerating planet after random planet, Elite's Stellar Forge system uses incredibly complex algorithms to place it's planets and systems. So accurate in fact, that when astronomers discovered the Trappist-1 star system with 7 planets orbiting it 39 light years away back in 2017... Elite Dangerous already had it figured out. Elites algorithms had already determined that something was supposed to be there, so when the developers went to add the newly discovered Trappist-1 system to the game, they found that it was already there. 39 light years away from earth, with 7 planets orbiting it. All they basically had to do was slap a name on it.
The scale is there, the exploration is there, and the politics and faction elements are there. Elite Dangerous biggest flaws was it's lack of aliens, no VR, and no space legs to walk around. They included aliens in about the most realistic way possible. Now they're about to include space legs so you'll be able to walk around and explore planets. While I wouldn't expect cities or anything, I'd definitely expect plenty of scenarios such as the dead bodies being found that make you want to leave not being hard to find.
The fact that Frontier Games has implemented so much despite being such a niche game, really shows what kind of person David Braben is. Dude is definitely doing his best. Imagine if Elite Dangerous had the financial backing Star Citizen did?