I am a long-time enjoyer of Bethesda games. Fallout and Elder Scrolls are near and dear to my heart. And yes, I like Starfield. I don’t love it with quite the fervour I have for Bethesda’s earlier games, but I have enjoyed spending over 100 hours of my time exploring their version of outer space.
I recently spent a day, perhaps ten hours in total, playing the first Starfield expansion: Shattered Space. I’m not finished as I am intentionally taking the ‘scenic’ route by completing several side quests. But I do have some initial thoughts, mostly in contradiction of some of the generally negative reviews I’ve read and watched.
My opinion: Shattered Space is good, a worthy expansion of a game I’ve enjoyed. But it won’t change anyone’s mind about Starfield if they didn’t like the base game.
The basic story
Shattered Space starts on a somewhat abandoned space station which, it quickly becomes clear, is an outpost of House Va’ruun. These are the strange worshippers of the Great Serpent, a worthy group to focus on for an expansion as their story was not deeply explored in the main game. Something has happened on the space station that ultimately leads back to the Va’ruun home world.
Both the space station and the Va’ruun home world, Va’ruun’kai, have been afflicted by a strange inter-spacial force that is converting citizens into wraith-like beings, killing thousands and destroying the landscape. You are the gifted outsider who, for somewhat sketchy reasons, the Var’uun entrust to save them. To begin the main quest you must join the cult of the Great Serpent yourself, then act as a somewhat super-natural detective to hopefully fix the problem that is destroying their society.
The good and the bad
General observations
The writing for Shattered Space is ‘standard’ Bethesda: mostly workmanlike, occasionally inspired and emotional, sometimes a bit silly. The injection of your character into the famously insular culture of Great Serpent worshippers in particular is very contrived, but I’m okay with how it plays out. The whole idea of most games is to engage in a bit of wish fulfilment, and being the ‘chosen one’ or whatever is quite normal.
The side stories I’ve been focused on so far are intriguing and do much to expand upon the Va’ruun back story. In the course of the two or three quests I’ve completed, the somewhat limited stereotype of the Serpent worshippers has been expanded. These are clearly real people with families, scientific curiosity, cultural differences, and a complex history.
The gameplay is largely consistent with the main Starfield experience. There are no changes to combat, no new skills or character classes, weapons are largely the same as the ones experienced elsewhere, and other than the ‘wraiths’ there aren’t really any significant new monsters to interact with. The expansion is focused on a single planet, so other than discovering the initial outpost there isn’t really any new space exploration or related mechanics.
The REV-8
The most significant difference you might notice if you haven’t played Starfield recently is the introduction of a land vehicle: the REV-8. This was actually added in a patch a while before the expansion shipped, but I hadn’t interacted with it before. I largely enjoyed the little vehicle’s more or less complete lack of rational physics as I drove it around- it certainly improves land travel.
My main ‘complaint’ about the buggy that there is no way to summon the REV-8 to your current location- it always starts out wherever you last landed your starship or where you left it. It is quite common to land your space ship in or near a community and that’s where your buggy will spawn. Unfortunately I would describe the REV-8 is dangerously twitchy to drive. Take care not to run over any civilians as this can turn the entire community against you quite quickly.
One other ‘useful’ feature that somewhat offsets the inability to summon the REV-8 is that it acts as a fast travel point. This can be handy to avoid having to walk back after you’ve left it somewhere to go exploring on foot.
Andreja’s story
My primary dissatisfaction with the expansion thus far is that it does nothing to expand Andreja’s story. Andreja is a Va’ruun, and is the main way I learned about the culture of these people before the expansion. She is essentially permanently exiled from her people and her home world if you complete her character arc as I did.
I was really hoping to see a whole new element of character development for her when we travelled to Va’ruun’kai. But there is nothing new to her story other than one or two “wow, haven’t seen this in a while” types of comments she makes in passing. This could have been a great bit of growth.
A bit more gravity-defying nausea
Shattered space starts with quite a big section of zero-G combat and, unfortunately, this tends to make me feel rather sick. I actually quite like the zero-g combat and navigation, so this isn’t a complaint about those gameplay elements in general but about the unfortunate motion sickness side effect they cause for me.
I had just finished the “Starjacker” quest line which had a lot of zero-gravity exploration before starting Shattered Space. Nausea impacted me mightily with that rather small adventure, leading me to set it aside for a couple of weeks after getting quite ill one day. Having Shattered Space start right off with a zero-gravity section was a bit of a challenge for me.
I managed to avoid getting very nauseous with the Shattered Space floaty bits, mostly by changing up between first and third person views a few times. It appears that the null-gravity section of Shattered Space is limited to the time at the beginning in the outpost. That said, it was somewhat of a relief to set my space-boots firmly on the surface of Va’ruun’kai.
But it would be nice if Bethesda could give some thought to analyzing the null-G gameplay’s relation to motion sickness. Perhaps they could provide some ‘mitigation’ settings as an accessibility feature for players who suffer from this malady.
Why I think some people are so disappointed
Overall, I have enjoyed Shattered Space quite a bit, making note of the fact that I am not yet finished the expansion. It is more of Starfield, and I enjoyed Starfield. But I believe this is the crux of the problem: it is still very much the same game as the rest of Starfield, and a lot of people really wanted something different.
Many people dislike Starfield for various reasons. Some people dislike it because it is very much a Bethesda game: if you enjoyed Fallout it is likely you will enjoy Starfield, but if you didn’t you won’t. Others dislike Starfield because it isn’t the same as earlier Bethesda games: it leans more heavily on procedural generation with fewer ‘hand-crafted’ stories. This leaves the world building and character stories feeling somewhat more shallow than Fallout or Skyrim.
I believe many of the people who disliked Starfield were unrealistically hopeful that the Shattered Space expansion would ‘re-write’ the game world to better match their desires. They expected a Skyrim-level of story involvement, or perhaps the very best of Fallout expansions like New Vegas or Far Harbour. I too had some hopes in this direction, and got a bit of what I wanted in the expansion’s focus on a single world.
But Shattered Space is not a complete reimagining of Starfield. It is more of the same, with some improvements but nothing overwhelming. And the absence of a substantive ‘rebirth’ of the game was tremendously disappointing for some people.
This was made worse, I think, by some of the defensive reactions from Bethesda upper management to bad reviews of the expansion. Statements from Emil Pagliarulo indicating his pride in the expansion and implication that people who weren’t liking it hadn’t played it properly struck some nerves. And indications in more general Bethesda leadership interviews that they were building worlds for players to ‘live in’ instead of living worlds came across as strategic misunderstandings of what people really want.
As I say, I enjoyed Shattered Space. But I also see the point some of the disappointed players are making. Bethesda really doesn’t seem to have heard what players are saying they want. BGS continue to go deep on procedural generation and similar techniques to ‘broaden’ the game worlds they make, when players really want more depth. Deeper stories, more complete and growing character arcs for companions, greater ‘hand crafting’ of the world.
What I don’t agree with is the aggressive review bombing that seems to be the normal reaction to games that disappoint these days. Shattered Space is not a ‘broken’ or ‘abysmal’ expansion worthy only of a 1 out of 5 star rating. Such a ranking is really more ‘trolling’ than ‘sending a message’.
Yes, I want Bethesda to start listening to players more deeply and hearing what they have to say. But I also want them to keep making games, employing good developers and designers, and producing better products. Driving Bethesda out of business or making them hate the work they do is not something I’d like to see happen.