Starfield: Shattered Space Review (Xbox Series X|S)

The Shattered Space expansion shows us bark without much bite. Our new planet is colorful, filled out around the main city, but doesn’t give the hand-crafted experience that many were looking for. Locations feel very similar to each other. Variety is few and far between. And most importantly, the expansion does not answer much in the way of criticisms of the game, not to mention the buggy gameplay and constant stuttering I had while playing through it.

That’s not to say that it’s all bad though. Shattered Space is a complete experience. The story adds to an already solid video game. The expansion is chock full of combat, as lots of the locales have more than enough enemies to level up your character.

Story

Shattered Space starts, as with many Bethesda Game Studios expansions, with a radio transmission. A call for players to check out a seemingly abandoned space station, the Oracle. Here commences the zero gravity kick-off mission. The starting mission for Shattered Space is really good. It starts off with a bang, with a mystery of what went wrong on this space station. Players will meet some characters in this mission that add intrigue to the plot, but don’t necessarily stay with the players as the narrative progresses.

After the first mission, and skipping some spoilers here, you are automatically transported to the home of the Va’ruun people, Va’ruun’kai. And let me tell you, Va’ruun’kai is beautiful. The purple hue in the sky, colors illuminating an already good-looking game into stunning landscapes. The city of Dazra, in chaos as the player arrives, learns of a catastrophic event that happened recently, and luckily enough the citizens need our help. Which is good for us, otherwise, they would probably just kill us.

Agreeing to help House Va’ruun in their time of need, players will then move into the city on their quest to find out the details of what happened, and how they can help the city. As players dive into the questline, they will meet representatives from each of the three leading houses that make up the governing body of the larger House Va’ruun faction.

In order to stay away from spoilers, the remainder of the story we will leave up to you to discover. Overall, my thoughts on the story were good, but not great. Shattered Space delivers on some missions but left me wanting more from others. Choices presented to us in the expansion are minimal at best, apart from allowing players to be complete jackasses to other characters which is quite funny in certain parts of dialogue. However, story choices feel lackluster and do not define the experience in any meaningful way.

The last main mission is where the story really shines. The mission itself is quite impressive and fun to play. Players will battle it out in an action-packed sequence as the faction story comes to a close. In my opinion, the final mission was the best part of the entire expansion.

Characters and interactions

Interactions with the new characters in the expansion often give history lessons and allow us to peer into parts of House Va’ruun. Beyond a few characters in the main story, most characters are not all that memorable. Even our dialogue with existing characters and companions are not noteworthy. I took Andreja with me everywhere I went in Dazra because I thought that she would give great insight into what we were doing or where we were going. But she didn’t. She barely had anything to say at all. Basically all she did was provide me with a way to persuade certain characters along the way. 

Character development was basically non-existent. None of my companions or main quest characters had anything of interest to say to me upon beating the storyline. A few side stories gave a little bit extra effort, but most were traditional smaller scale quests that one could compare to busy work.

Va’ruun’kai

I’ve already stated that the planet is beautiful. And it is a true bright spot of the added content here. The city of Dazra is also a bright spot for expansion. The city feels big when first walking into it, and benefits largely from the patches that Starfield has added since launch, namely the surface maps. Surface maps are a huge plus that was certainly needed in time for this expansion to come out, and I found myself consistently using this to help find my way around. 

Va’ruun’kai is more fleshed out than the other cities in Starfield. It is more of a classic experience in the way that it delivers a story. Traveling to certain spots throughout your Shattered Space journey will require players to walk, or drive from location to location. This is similar to other fan favorite Bethesda titles (Skyrim, Fallout, etc.) rather than encountering loading screen after loading screen. The expansion story is entirely self-contained and takes place all in Dazra and the surrounding regions, which was admittedly a breath of fresh air. Having said all that, the exploration still feels empty and without much to see and do. It feels different from a classic Bethesda experience. I know that Starfield is a different IP and tries to do its own thing, but still strays a little too far from the line.

Summary

Starfield: Shattered Space is its own experience. I found it to be both a hit and a miss in certain spots as it feels like it’s trying to find itself, rather than knowing what it wants to be. The story was good, but not excellent. Exploration definitely had a few wins, but still felt largely empty and did not reward players enough. Loot system is still flawed and the added content clearly did not include a whole lot of new weapons. Mainly these are reskinned versions of weapons already introduced to us. 

On top of all that, the stuttering and bugs were messy. I felt Bethesda had worked on the game a good bit since launch and then went backward for this release. It doesn’t drag the experience but does make it slightly less enjoyable. The story is simplistic, but gives players a look into who and what House Va’ruun is and some of the cultural drivers for the faction. Hopefully House Va’ruun will continue to play a bigger role in the Starfield story beats going forward, because I truly feel they are an interesting faction that should have more missions associated with them. Is Shattered Space going to improve your perception of Starfield? Unlikely, although diehard fans may just find enough to enjoy here