Starfield Shattered Space review: DLC for people who hate Starfield

The first DLC for Starfield feels specifically designed for people who don’t like Starfield. Right down to its bones, Shattered Space is a frantic Bethesda backpedal.

Don’t like the endless planet-hopping in the base game? No problem, Shattered Space takes place entirely on one planet, and a relatively small chunk of it at that. Not a fan of Starfield’s procedural generation? You got it, everywhere you go in the DLC across roughly four hours of the main quest line is handcrafted (or, at least, that’s what’s claimed).

And how about the grossly underdeveloped backstory for the human splinter group known as House Va’ruun? Not to worry, this entire DLC teleports you through a wormhole to their mysterious home capital, Dazra. Here you’ll attempt to reverse a catastrophic rift in space-time that’s destroyed their seat of power, the Scaled Citadel.

There’s just one problem, however. None of the structural changes in Shattered Space play to Starfield’s strengths. For instance, there is not a single second of spaceship combat or customization, which is arguably the base game’s defining feature.

Building your own personalized ship from the ground up by satisfyingly snapping together hundreds of different modules, cockpits, and engines before slapping on an arsenal of devastating guns and taking to space for a dogfight amongst the stars made for some of Starfield’s most memorable moments. One year on from release, players are still coming up with creative ship builds, like Star Destroyers and school buses and lobsters. I saw one the other day that looks like a cheeseburger.

Sadly, Shattered Space is set wholly on terra firma. In fact, when you visit the ship technician at Dazra’s landing pad, he proudly proclaims he hasn’t had a chance to experiment with ship parts from other star systems, aka the ones you just came from, which is a poor excuse for not throwing us a few new pieces to play with. The ships he sells are, meanwhile, identical to ones you’ll find in the base game, barring all-black paint jobs (which you could have applied yourself for free anyway).

Shattered Space parks shipbuilding by the wayside to focus on a single, purposefully paced faction quest that promises to lift the lid on Starfield’s most enigmatic race. You’ll have wished that lid stayed on, though, because the Va’ruun are duller than dishwater. Pious religious devotees, the bulk of them are deadly serious to the point where there isn’t a single moment of levity.

It’s as if the game doesn’t want to accidentally offend the sensibilities of this made-up religion – and let’s not forget, these are people who worship a gigantic space snake. Not all Va’ruun are believers, however. One you encounter in the local watering hole The Herald’s Rest, an arthritic barfly called Tane, has a shred of personality, but this just exposes another of Shattered Space’s problems: the long-winded writing. Protracted and tedious, there’s just too much of it. Your actions are often a case of seeking out an individual, listening to them talk at length through a single fixed camera angle while rooted to the spot, and then repeating the process with two or three more boring people.

Missions therefore take about 20 minutes to set up, when the preamble could’ve easily been cut in half. That’s especially true given the straightforward objectives, which include disrupting an electric dam, choosing whether to kill a son or escort him off-world, or freeing a group of hostages. It’ll take every bit of your willpower not to skip the arduous dialogue and get right to the point, and there’s little that makes you want to probe deeper into the lore. Shattered Space demotes the Va’ruun from cryptic space cultists to humorless drones you can’t wait to ditch.

The choices you’ll make are surface-level. What looked at first like a branching story where you can decide the fate of the Va’ruun people by choosing which of three political parties to side with devolves into a final decision that doesn’t seem to change anything. Barring a few bits of extra dialogue, there’s no impact on the wider game. Even your one Va’ruun companion Andreja doesn’t have that much to say over the course of Shattered Space, beyond a few environmental barks and unique dialogue choices, despite it being the first time she’s seen her home in decades. It results in an expansion that feels disappointingly self-contained.

The DLC doesn’t end there, however. You can roam around the rest of the planet and discover brand-new points of interest. These, as in the base game, are dungeons rewarding you with chests and rare loot. There are listening posts, ancient tombs, and outposts. You’re not really incentivized to continue playing once the main quest has concluded, however, due to the lack of new loot.

There are scant few armor pieces and no new character skills, which is another massive drawback to the DLC. The entire impetus to progress through Starfield is to rank up and unlock fresh guns, gear, and perks. Shattered Space could have introduced an assortment of fresh gear into the randomly generated chest pool and added excitement back into dungeon-clearing, the endgame activity. Instead, there’s little reason to push on.

There are, at least, six new weapons. One emits explosive electric orbs, while another is a handheld plasma minigun. Five craftable grenades meanwhile add a fresh assortment of explosives into the mix, like a freeze grenade and one that spawns an NPC as bait. The new Shattered Space enemies, however, are not so fun to use them on.

There are two main ones, and like the wider game, they’re distinctly horror-themed. Vortex Phantoms are glowing blue people who attack you while moaning like sci-fi ghosts, and Vortex Terrors are spider-like creatures with a hint of The Thing who rush you en-masse with clicking pincers. One thing they have in common is teleportation, which is horrible to deal with.

Teleporting enemies suck. You’ll be shooting someone and they’ll suddenly disappear, popping up in a new location and massively interfering with your flow. It’s like trying to bite into a sandwich and having someone slap it out your hand. Even if you play tactically and watch your exits they can unfairly spawn behind you and deal damage from off-screen. Both Vortex Phantoms and Vortex Terrors are stop/start nuisances that destroy the rhythm of combat.

Outside of the main quest are some side quests, and they’re worth doing. One, the Legend of the Fang, rewards you with a legendary armor set. And beyond that, there is a wider star system to explore, which contains other planets and moons. These, unlike Dazra and its outskirts, are all procedurally generated.

As such, Shattered Space is a limited expansion that betrays the concept of Starfield. In a game set across hundreds of star systems with space flight and ship customisation, here you’re rooted to a few square miles. Sure, you can leave any time you like, but this is where the action is.

Sure, it’s a legit criticism that the original game could have focused on doing a handful of handcrafted planets rather than a thousand procedurally generated ones, but Shattered Space takes the wrong lessons from that, veering hard in the opposite direction. Besides, it’s meant to be a semi-grounded sci-fi game. Bethesda itself called Starfield’s aesthetic ‘NASA punk.’ Who was actually demanding Shattered Space’s poe-faced alien horror?

The Va’ruun are beyond boring when you get to know them, Dazra is small in the scope of the grand cosmos, and your ship just sits there beckoning you despite there being no new way to customise it, nor anywhere interesting to go. Combine that with annoying enemies and scant new loot to discover and there’s not really much reason to blast off again.

Score: 5/10

Platform tested: PC