The first major DLC expansion for Starfield has arrived and it introduces a whole new planet, together with a range of new and old problems. After the 2023 Xbox showcase, and the debut of Starfield, it seemed as if Xbox was finally poised to take its place amongst the stars. And yet only a few months after launch it was realised that the game had had no impact on console sales and in fact they were much worse than expected over Christmas.
Xbox’s current multiformat policy isn’t because of Starfield – the game remains an exclusive – but it has certainly played a role in dictating Microsoft ’s current direction. The irony is that Starfield isn’t a bad game, as we made plain in our original review . However, it’s not a particularly good one either, with its biggest faults being that it feels disjointed, old-fashioned, and repetitive.
This DLC manages to remove one of those problems while magnifying the others, including the weak storytelling and the fact that the characters and background lore for the universe are so thoroughly uninteresting. In fact, through the 12 hours or more of Shattered Space we’ve barely felt less gripped all year. The premise of Shattered Space, and the reason it manages to overcome the problem of feeling disjointed, is that you spend the whole adventure on the home planet of nobody’s favourite death cult, House Va’ruun.
We found it very difficult to take anyone associated with the Great Serpent seriously in the original game and the .