Starfield: Shattered Space Review

Although Starfield has received many updates that ironed out its city navigation system and introduced a land vehicle to enhance its disjointed exploration formula, it still feels like a mixed bag of stellar moments and astronomical disappointments.

That’s why I was cautiously excited about Shattered Space after spending hours exploring the base game’s identical points of interest and enduring its flawed sense of exploration.

I was excited because I remembered all the great DLCs that enriched Bethesda‘s previous titles, and I know what difference new DLC can make after beating Cyberpunk 2077‘s Phantom Liberty.

I was cautious because Starfield was built upon an ancient engine, and believed that its problems were too intrinsic to simply go away with a major expansion pack.

After my 13 hours of purple-infused and snake-obsessed journey into the homeland of one of Starfield’s most mysterious factions, I can say that I was not cautious enough.

Because what should have been a second wind for a failing space epic— or at least a memorable comeback with a few serious new mechanics— turned out to be a forgettable and underwhelming experience.

Kicking Off With A Classic Sci-fi Trope

Shattered Space is a refreshingly accessible DLC that seamlessly integrates into the game. It allows you to swiftly immerse yourself in a classic sci-fi trope— a troubled space station with a distress call.

While it’s undoubtedly dated, Bethesda knows how to work magic with the Creation Engine and build an immersive scene and atmosphere. The scene in question here is The Oracle, a research center for the mysterious House Va’ruun, which consists of people obsessed with a big serpent.

This solid introduction of The Oracle was a much-welcome departure from the repetitive landmarks of Starfield’s desolate planets.

It got even better, further raising expectations, with the addition of Phantoms, a new enemy type that teleport around the freakish space station. However, despite initially heightening the mystery, fighting them became a chore very quickly, much like dealing with other aspects of Shattered Space.

Buggier Than The Base Game

Only after a couple of minutes of letting Shattered Space present its mysterious introduction and fighting against these strange enemies, did they start teleporting into hazardous areas of the space station, eliminating themselves and breaking immersion in the process.

Alongside their rough combat AI, Shattered Space also introduced bugs that prevented me from progressing within mere minutes.

For example, I was unable to pick up a keycard required to complete an objective while fighting against the unfair space wizards simultaneously. On multiple occasions later in the game, I had to revisit specific areas several times to trigger essential events to occur.

Indeed, the base game had its fair share of bugs and glitches as well, but it was actually one of the most polished Bethesda games to date. A low bar, admittedly, but a benchmark was set nonetheless.

Although it miserably failed to hide its engine’s technical limitations, there weren’t many bugs that impeded quest progression or completely broke Starfield. Shattered Space, on the other hand, started with serious bugs and kept throwing them my way until the end.

For this reason, it’s hard to like even as a standalone experience due to bugs and underwhelming content, which only consists of a few new weapons alongside Va’ruun-themed equipment.

It Does Get Something Right

The long-awaited DLC might be far from breathing life into Bethesda’s underwhelming space opera. But it does get something right and acknowledges Starfield’s arguably most glaring issue, the disappointing spacefaring experience.

Since space travel in Starfield is pretty non-existent as it’s built on fast-traveling and tiresome menu navigation, completing quests and progressing in the game is not as fun as it was in Fallout or Skyrim.

The quests and objectives are scattered throughout the systems and planets, which are connected to each other via…loading screens.

This technical limitation removed the sense of exploration, a core element that made Bethesda games household titles in the past.

Shattered Space addresses the base game’s fragmented exploration formula, to some extent, by offering a more condensed experience set in a single place.

It’s a welcome change to experience fewer loading screens and actually traverse the landscape to reach objectives. It’s even better when the environment seems interesting and filled with anomalies like gravity bubbles, hazardous areas, and the aggressive use of the color purple.

Welcome To Va’ruun’kai

Shattered Space is set in Va’ruun’kai, the home planet of one of Starfield’s most extremist and mysterious factions, House Va’ruun. After their keenly felt absence in the main game, it only made sense for an expansion pack to focus on them.

While the faction is a reserved group that is only represented by zealots in the main game, Shattered Space somehow manages to downplay their introduction after starting big with The Oracle.

As soon as I landed on Dazra, the purple-drenched capital city of Va’ruun’kai, I found myself as the new savior of the troubled group within the first 30 minutes of the story, which continued to weaken the big introduction and slowly started to feel like another generic Bethesda story.

Just when my thoughts on that were all but cemented, I rose to prominence in Va’ruun’kai, and Shattered Space tasked me with navigating through the paranoid, double-crossing, and sneak-obsessed treacherous dwellers of the planet.

This was when it started to showcase its strengths by presenting a series of dilemmas, engaging quests, and challenging situations.

While the conclusions of those moments were sometimes marred by lazy writing and strange wrap-ups, it was still great to see a glimpse of Starfield’s narrative brilliance uninterrupted by the base game’s inherent issues.

Behind the appalling lack of actual content and many missed opportunities, Shattered Space showed some of its developer’s expertise in tailoring interesting quests and storylines, slowly unfolding in an entirely different and inviting landscape.

But that was it. Shattered Space’s main story consists of brief flashes of storytelling finesse, and the moments that sparked excitement were frequently overshadowed by its significant shortcomings like the quest-breaking bugs, lack of new items, gameplay systems, and immersion-breaking details.

Closing Comments

Shattered Space is just more of what Starfield couldn’t deliver. Although its focused, single-location experience and engaging quests provide a refreshing change, its overall lackluster quality proves that no updates or expansions can truly transform Starfield. While moments of brilliance remain, and Shattered Space does add some memorable moments to the pile, it’s a DLC that ensures that Starfield doesn’t go out with a bang like a Supernova, but rather fades into the vacuum of space without so much as a whimper.