When they released Gothic I, remember a magazine being amazed at how the NPCs object to you barging into their homes, let alone nicking their shit.
The absense of this mechanic was keenly felt when I started my ultimate Morrowind run this year. In fact, it took a whole mod to to mark stuff that people would own as owned by those people. Good for immersion, yes, but it was also a quality of life improvement since an RPG player will naturally want to take anything that's not nailed-down - and a lot of stuff in vanilla Morrowind isn't nailed down.
At this point, I don't remember if Starfield had homes with stuff you could steal, but I do remember being forced by cops to go undercover because I inadvertently stole a screwdriver.
Point is, games need more organic trespassing that's meant to show that it is an inhabited place, it shouldn't be constrained to brief stealth sections (looking at you, dated RPG The Witcher 2).
Granted, some don't even bother with a day-and-night cycle for NPCs, so this may be a tall order.