OK, OK, I know all about the memes. But you can say ‘dead game’ as much as you want and you still won’t be able to undermine one, incorruptible truth: Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion looks great. In a behind-closed-doors presentation at Xbox’s booth at Gamescom ‘24, Bethesda gave me about 15 minutes of information on the game’s upcoming DLC pack, and I have to tell you: I’m sold. It actually reminded me of Dead Space, more than anything.
Shattered Space, which has been shrouded in mystery for a very long time, was properly shown off at Xbox’s Showcase in June 2024, but even after the media blowout, specific details about the expansion have been hard to come by. Since the initial reveal trailer, we’ve known that Shattered Space will take us to the home planet of House Va’ruun – an un-fleshed out faction in the main game – to investigate some sort of planet-wide calamity.
But in this new showcase I saw this morning, I’ve learned that things are getting more intimate on this planet. As Todd Howard outlined in an interview not long after that initial reveal, the whole new area is ‘hand-crafted’, so the environment will feel more curated and less generic than most of the planets in the main game. It’ll be open-ended; any of the quests you pick up during the DLC will help you tap further into the mysterious House and its homeland, and you’re arriving shortly after a massive accident has happened. The population is still reeling, and – like any proper RPG protagonist – you’ll be the one to pick up the pieces.