If there's any studio that knows how to make a memorable DLC, it's Bethesda. From taking us to Mirelurk-infested shores in Fallout 4's Far Harbor, to the realm of Madness in Oblivion's Shivering Isles, or the vampire hunter fortress in Skyrim: Dawnguard, Bethesda has delivered a strong lineup of expansions over the years. Each one built on the sprawling worlds with new locations, and fleshed out their respective base game's experiences with fresh faces and stories. Now, Starfield Shattered Space promises to follow suit by letting us delve into the story of the mysterious Va'ruun faction on the homeworld planet of Va'runn'kai. While Starfield is home to over 1,000 planets and makes use of procedural tech for its random instances, the new expansion's world has been hand-crafted to recapture the exploration of Fallout and Skyrim.
"We knew very early on that we needed to add an explorable landmass with lots of hand-crafted content," studio design director Emil Pagliarulo says, "as opposed to the base game’s method of providing systemic and procedural content on these massive planets. Knowing that content is contained to a single, large landmass means players can explore like they used to in Fallout and Skyrim."
