After a little over a year since its release on September 6th of 2023, Bethesda released its DLC for Starfield titled Shattered Space. However, rather than celebration, the release has been met with disappointment and critique towards the developers and their new content from fans and critics alike.
The highly anticipated Bethesda made, open world space odyssey hit low review status on Steam in December 2023, around 4 months after its release. This mirrors the current response to the DLC, reaching “mostly negative” reviews (2,120) and a 57 on Metacritic. While fans had expected a continuation of the story and feature fixes like ship building, space building, and outpost building, the DLC instead contains a mostly contained side story on a single planet with new weapons and cosmetics for a $29.99 price tag.
In contrast to the reviews, Starfield’s design director, Emil Pagliarulo, spoke highly of the game recently, stating:
I think in a lot of ways, Starfield is the hardest thing Bethesda has ever done…We pushed ourselves to make something totally different. To just jam into an Xbox the biggest, richest space simulation RPG anyone could imagine. That we pulled it off makes Starfield something of a technical marvel. It’s also, in a lot of ways, the best game we’ve ever made. But for us, most importantly, Starfield has its own unique personality, and now sits right next to Fallout and Elder Scrolls.
Director and executive producer at Bethesda, Todd Howard spoke in an interview with YouTuber, MrMattyPlays, and said that he and the company are aiming to release a new story expansion annually, stating, “How long that continues, hopefully a very long time, but we’re planning for the one after this, so there will be another one”. If what he says is true, then we can expect a new expansion for Starfield in fall of 2025.