Summary
Almost a year since the game’s initial launch,Starfield’s first major expansion,Shattered Space, is nearing its release date.Shattered Space’s story will delve into the mysterious world of House Va’ruun, the third interstellar government to have formed in the Settled Systems, with new locations and characters, and was announced and included as part ofStarfield’s Premium and Constellation Editions as an incentive for players to pick up these special editions beforeStarfield’s September 2023 release. However, itcan also be purchased separately.
[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the story in Starfield: Shattered Space.]
One ofStarfield’s main selling points during Bethesda’s promotion of the game was the sheer number of explorable planets, withroughly 1000 planetsspread across 100 different star systems. This saw a blend of “story” planets, which featured handcrafted environments and each main faction’s headquarters or specific locations that tied into the main campaign, and many more procedurally generated planets with points of interest to visit and loot or the potential to build outposts and other facilities to mine them for resources.
Starfield: Shattered Space DLC Release Date, Price, & New Story Details
Starfield’s first DLC is coming sooner than anyone expected. Here’s everything to know about Shattered Space ahead of its upcoming release.
Starfield’s Shattered Space Expansion Features More Handcrafted Environments
The New Locations Tie In Heavily To Shattered Space’s New Story
Unsurprisingly, as confirmed byXbox Wire’s preview,Starfield’sShattered Spaceexpansion will feature more handcrafted environments. It’s long been confirmed that the new content would feature never-before-seen locations, and with the arrival of House Va’ruun, many speculated that their home planet of Va’ruun’kai would be a prominent location, particularly if players would be visiting the house’s main headquarters in the capital city Dazra.
Va’ruun’kai is notoriously shrouded in secrecy to the point that even its star system is unknown. House Va’ruun’s agents are not provided with the jump coordinates and only return home once their superiors deem their mission complete and send a ship to retrieve them to further maintain this. The fact players can visit inShattered Spaceseems to come from an accidental discovery when attending a distress call by a beleaguered space station called The Oracle.
It’s now been confirmed thatShattered Space’s new missions will be set almost entirely across this single planetin a new multi-hour adventure. By the time players arrive on Va’ruun’kai, they find it in a state of disarray, with the people of House Va’ruun having tragically experimented with grav drive technology two weeks prior, leading to the destruction of Dazra and beyond, with other portions of the world cut off and trapped inside gravitational distortions known as Vortexes.
Grav Drive technology was also responsible for the destruction of Earth in 2203.
The Va’Ruun leader has also vanished following this failed experiment, leaving factions of Va’Ruun society vying for power while extra-dimensional monsters have begun coming through the Vortexes and inhabiting the planet.Shattered Spacewill be using these elements to lean heavily into the horror genre, as players have to negotiate both political and violent struggles while solving a core mystery surrounding exactly what is happening and how to potentially save Va’ruun’kai while learning more about the group to expand upon the lore introduced in the main game.
Starfield: Shattered Space’s Producer Sets Expectations On Scope & Scale: “A Traditional Bethesda Expansion”
Bethesda’s Lead Creative Producer Timothy Lamb spoke to SR at Gamescom about what players can expect from the upcoming Starfield: Shattered Space DLC.
Starfield Needs More Handcrafted Environments
The Procedurally Generated Planets Have Faced Plenty Of Criticism Since Launch
While some may be surprised to hear thatShattered Spacetakes place entirely on one planet, considering the sheer scale of the base game, this is for the best.Starfield’s handcrafted environments had far more life and personality to each of them, with the Western-inspired Akiva City, the Cyberpunk-esque Neon, and the utopian-looking New Atlantis all having distinct styles that set them apart.
Players can leave and return to Va’Ruun’kai at almost any time.
By focusing entirely on Va’ruun’kai, Bethesda has been able to create yet another unique environment, even if it appears as a shell of its former glory by the time players visit it. This ensures that the studio can wholly lean into its horror elements by not reusing elements from the base game to give players something new and fresh in these new missions.
One of the main criticismsStarfieldfaced was that while the idea of exploring 1000 planets sounded impressive on paper, in practice,the procedurally generated planets were mostly empty and lifeless, with few exceptions where there were more points of interest available to reap more rewards from visiting. While the idea seems to be that players would use these blank canvasses to build their outposts and mine for resources, it did make for a very dull exploration experience for the most part.
Despite various conversations about the house and other lore,House Va’ruun’s base of operations was never shown in the base game.
Starfieldcertainly needs more handcrafted environments to remedy this, even if it’s renovating or repopulating some of the planets in the game with some distinct cities or smaller towns over time, asother colonies could take up residence across the galaxy. This is clearly something that has worked well forShattered Space, asXbox Wire’s Joe Skrebels has already described the expansion as “[looking and feeling] like a classic Bethesda Game Studios experience, similar to prior expansions for The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series – a self-contained story that plays with tone and mechanics that the main game didn’t” before going on to note that “Bethesda Game Studios have created something new with Va’ruun’kai” with its “deeply alien” landscape and “unique” architecture providing plenty for those who have already immersed themselves in the exploration ofStarfield’s galaxy over the last year.
Since launch,Starfieldhas improved with mechanics that have made exploration more enjoyable, such as the recent inclusion of land vehicles, but it would be great if the places that could be explored were more interesting in the first place.Shattered Spaceseems like a step in the right direction for the game, and hopefully, there will be plenty more to come, even in smaller updates outside theconfirmed future expansions.
