Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion is out now, and unsurprisingly its arrival doesn’t seem to have changed anyone’s mind regarding Bethesda’s cosmic RPG. The consensus, at least on Steam, seems to be: if you dig Starfield, you’ll probably enjoy this one. But the lack of new features and a story that doesn’t quite hit have left it with a Mixed rating so far.
The most notable addition is Va’ruun’kai, a new hand-crafted planet, and its capital, Darza. They seem to be going down pretty well. They’re definitely a step up from the rather plain worlds served up to us in the base game, and there are plenty of posts on the subreddit showing off the striking vistas holidaymakers can expect. Sure, I’d book a trip there. But from the sounds of it, I doubt I’d find many reasons to stay for more than a quick visit.
“Its [sic] no wonder they marketed this the way they did,” one review reads, “focusing only on the narrative and world space. Outside of that there is almost zero new content. If you stack this up against any of Bethesda’s prior dlc this is by far the worst value for your money.”
This sentiment is echoed throughout the negative reviews, with it being unfavourably compared to the DLC of Bethesda’s previous games, like Skyrim and Fallout 4. “Less content than any skyrim DLC,” one of them claims.
It does sound like the main quest is of a higher quality than the base game’s, but that’s very much the focus here, and it looks like a lot of players were hoping for something a bit more transformative. Even the more positive reviews, of which there are plenty—thoughthey’re still outweighed by the negative ones—acknowledge that there’s not much here that’s going to move the needle.
“A thoroughly mediocre, self contained DLC, at a time when starfield desperately needs more depth,” reads one of the positive reviews. “To describe Shattered Space in two words, it would be ‘missed opportunity’.” After an inauspicious start, they go on to commend the quest design and the city of Darza, but they find the lack of new features for outposts and ships disappointing, as well as criticising how it doesn’t seem to add anything to the base game.
“If you enjoyed Starfield, you’ll enjoy this DLC,” another positive review reads, nicely summing up the vibes on Steam. “If not, it won’t change your opinion of the game.”
Cyberpunk is mentioned a few times, and I get the sense that Phantom Liberty has skewed expectations about what can be achieved with DLC. CDPR’s one and only Cyberpunk expansion undeniably flipped the game’s narrative, from a big disappointment to a fantastic comeback, but it also took three years to come out, launched with a gargantuan overhaul to the base game, and arrived after a long period of substantial improvements. Bethesda never suggested Shattered Space would be so wide-ranging or transformative.
It’s a bit much to hope that an expansion could make a game you didn’t enjoy suddenly brilliant—as welcome as that might be. Though it’s not without precedent, even in Bethesda’s own games. Fallout 76 was a bit of a dud at launch, but the Wastelander expansion, which finally populated the game with NPCs rather than just mutants and robots, dramatically changed the survival game for the better. So you never know: maybe Starfield will be able to change hearts and minds in a future expansion.
Reviewers didn’t get their hands on Shattered Space until launch, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer for our verdict.
