Summary
Starfield: Shattered Spaceis finally here, and while the reaction across Reddit and Twitter have been positive, it’s a different story over onSteam.
With nearly 500 reviews, the expansion has a less than desirable “Mixed” score. Some highlight the improved exploration and denser map, while others lament the number of fetch quests and fiddly zero gravity fights. Some say that it’s just moreStarfield, while others say that it’s everything Starfieldshouldhave been — it’s an interesting divide, so far.
What The Reviews Are Saying
Shattered Space sees our Starborn travel to the planet Va’ruun’kai in the Kavnyk system, home ofHouse Va’ruun. We arrive here after responding to a distress call from The Oracle space station where we encounter several ghosts called Vortex Phantoms. And as it turns out, we’re the only one who can hear the Anasako phantom.
Many of the negative reviews criticise this opening for immediately painting us as “some sort of chosen one”, a common Bethesda trope that fans are quickly growing tired of. “The story is… typical,” reads one review. “You are instantly declared a CHOSEN ONE. AGAIN. This is BORING. Bethesda, couldn’t you come up with a better start at least?”
“It’s revealed that you are the only person who can hear the phantom of Anasako. Why? Who knows,” another writes. “I don’t think it’s ever revealed, so I’ll mark it down as ‘protagonist of the video game syndrome’.”
However, several positive reviews claim that Shattered Space is “the most compelling” narrative in the game, even if it “suffers from the typical Bethesda ‘show up and become in charge of this thing’” storytelling.
There is something that’s bringing everyone together, though. Both negative and positive reviewers are incredibly disappointed with how the fan-favourite companionAndrejais handled.
Hailing from House Va’ruun, many were expecting more to her story if you brought her along. However, many claim that she barely talks and that NPCs don’t react to her presence. “Andreja doesn’t matter because she has no effect whatsoever on this DLC,” reads one review. “The only thing close to an impact was having an option to click a dialogue option for her to get a keycard from someone”.
Other notable points that crop up across several reviews is a lack of new weapons, armour, and ship parts, the $30 price tag, the DLC’s length, the many loading screens, and the smaller size of the new city.
“Andreja was simply too passive and rarely made any comments,” another says. “Many missed opportunities for Andreja involvement,” reads another.
While many have clearly sunk time into the DLC — some have even beaten it just one day after launch — it’s worth noting that a handful of reviews outright state that they have no intention of playing Shattered Space and are simply leaving negative scores out of spite. These are the minority so far, but no doubt play a role in swinging the pendulum towards the negative side.
Starfield: Shattered Space
Shattered Space is the first DLC for Bethedsa’s space RPG Starfield. It expands the core story, adding a horror-like twist as players head to the homeworld of House Va’ruun.
