Starfield has been out for a full year now, and its expansion, Shattered Space, is just a few weeks away. The game has gotten some updates here and there from new base/ship items to vehicles to quality of life improvements, but Shattered Space is a huge expansion, and now we have some details about what’s coming outside of what we’ve seen in the trailer alone.
The new details include:
- 50 new locations to discover in Va’ruun’kai, where things should be a tighter, more focused experienced on a single planet rather than roaming large planets finding the same 20 structures.
- There will be new grenades built from organic material you find.
- There will be “formidable” new called Redeemed and Vortex Horrors.
- You will still be running into Zealots (obviously) Spacers and the Crimson Fleet, who will appear across the planet.
The main takeaway from the entire concept of this expansion is addressing one of the biggest problems players had with the original game, where it came feel 1,000 miles wide but an inch deep at times with so much blank space across all those planets, or entire planets with one interesting settlement. Going to a single planet full of much more handcrafted rather than procedural or clone stamped locations feels like exactly what the game needs. If they added 300 more planets on top of the thousand, what would that do, exactly? Not much, I’d argue, and this feels like it’s taking Bethesda more back to what it’s known for, focused, hand-made experiences and maps.
Starfield has had an…interesting year, with Microsoft bragging that it had the most initial players for a Bethesda game ever, though with the obvious caveat that most of those were likely not sales, but those playing on Xbox Game Pass.
On Steam, where you did have to buy it, it peaked at 330,000 players, and now averages about 8-10,000 a night. Nothing crazy, and less than Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 right now, but it has assembled a community and that has certainly been bolstered by the addition of mod tools.
A key difference with the expansion here is that it is not included in Game Pass, and Microsoft will ask for $30 for it. It’s a way to monetize a game with no other traditional forms of monetization, and a way to make Game Pass players pay something past their subscription. I am curious what the attach rate is going to be here. I’ll certainly be playing when it’s live, or perhaps before if I secure myself a code.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
