Starfield’s Shattered Space DLC Can Fix The Game’s Most Annoying Issue

Summary Shattered Space DLC for Starfield promises new story content, locations, gear, and more this year.

Shattered Space should focus on smaller, hand-crafted locations in a single star system to reduce reliance on fast travel in the game.

Speculation suggests Shattered Space will delve into House Va'ruun backstory, possibly in a new star system, enhancing player immersion.

Not much has been revealed about the specifics of Starfield's upcoming Shattered Space DLC, but Bethesda has confirmed it will launch sometime this year and will bring new story content, locations, gear, and more to the game. With this, it also has the opportunity to avoid the game's most annoying issue by also being a smaller, more condensed story than that of the main game.

Starfield gave players the opportunity to explore over 1000 planets across 100 Star Systems, with the sheer scale of the game being a major selling point prior to its launch. Unfortunately, in practice, this scale didn't always work in the game's favor, with many players complaining that while the Settled Systems were impressive in their scale, and the story locations were well crafted by Bethesda, most of the procedurally generated planets were largely empty. The game also required fast travel to get to any objectives at a pace that didn't slow down the story too much, as manually traveling between planets took far too long and involved moving through the same kind of dead space at a seemingly slow speed, regardless of how much power was being allocated to engines or boosts.

Related 10 Starfield Updates That Need To Happen Before The Shattered Space DLC Starfield’s upcoming Shattered Space DLC is exciting, but many things need to be done to the base game first to make it a better experience for all.

Shattered Space Needs To Have A Smaller Scale

And A Reduced Reliance On Fast Travel

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While Starfield, as with many Bethesda games, offered plenty of side activities and quests for players to partake in outside of the main campaign, Shattered Space would benefit from being a more pared-down affair. Setting its story between a smaller number of hand-crafted locations rather than adding more procedurally generated ones would reduce how much fast travel is required and would keep up the pacing of the story, as currently, jumping out of gameplay to scroll through the Star Map to select a planet three or four systems away (which sometimes involves doing a fast travel jump three of four times depending on a ship's build and resources) does tend to kill the sense of exploration and take players out of the game, breaking any sense of immersion, especially when the fast travel itself involves a load screen, rather than the seemingly instant load speeds seen in other modern games involving such a mechanic like Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

As many Starfield players have likely already finished its main story and would have spent months exploring what the base game has to offer by the time the DLC arrives, Shattered Space should focus almost entirely on the new locations, rather than sending players back and forth to pre-explored locations such as New Atlantis, Neon, or Akila City. This will further immersion by letting players truly dive into a handful of new planets and learn more about their citizens, rather than constantly stepping away to embark on extra missions and tasks elsewhere.

Related One Highly Anticipated Starfield Update Will Totally Change The Game, & It's Not The DLC It shouldn't be long before Starfield gets a huge overhaul, and the much-anticipated DLC isn't actually going to be the source of the biggest change.

Theories Suggest Shattered Space Will Focus On House Va'ruun

The House Is Located In An Unknown Star System

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Of course, that's not to say there shouldn't be any planet-hopping in Shattered Space, as rumors surrounding its story suggest it could take place in a completely new star system. Speculation has been rife that the DLC will focus on House Va'ruun, the third interstellar government to have formed in the Settled Systems who were mentioned often throughout Starfield's main campaign, but their base of operations was not seen.

Romanceable companion Andreja was a member of House Va'ruun before joining Constellation as an astronomer and navigator.

From various conversations and other lore found across the galaxy-spanning map, players did learn more about House Va'ruun's backstory and beliefs, with them being formed by the passengers of a colony ship that launched from New Atlantis in 2190 and was reported lost before revealing themselves as a fully-formed government in 2230. The house is also known for its strong belief, following a being known as "The Great Serpent" and although it tried to restore its reputation after its former leader Jinan Va'ruun declared an all-out war on the rest of human civilization - which has since been referred to as the "Serpent's Crusade" - the house has since withdrawn itself into isolation, with Andreja informing the player that Zealots still seem to be twisting the house's teachings and attacking those they deem "non-believers".

Players' backstories can also be linked to House Va'ruun's teachings, as the "Serpent's Embrace" trait states that they were raised worshiping the Great Serpent.

With such build-up surrounding the house's backstory, it does seem likely that Bethesda would choose to take players to its home planet at some point. While the star system is currently unknown, stopping players from traveling there, House Va'ruun is situated on the planet Va’ruun’kai. If Shattered Space's story were to be situated entirely in this unknown star system, it would benefit greatly from letting players become fully immersed in House Va'ruun's culture as they explore Va’ruun’kai's capital city, Dazra, and maybe another major city, town, or settlement within walking distance.

To keep Va'ruun'kai's location a secret, House Va'ruun doesn't even share the jump coordinates of the planet with its own agents, instead dropping them off at random locations to carry out their supply-gathering missions with practically no support. These agents also can't return home until their superiors deem their mission complete and send a ship to retrieve them, further ensuring they don't know the route to and from Va'ruun'kai.

With the size of the Star system also unknown, it could offer up plenty of variety in the types of immediate moons or planets surrounding Va'ruun'kai without having to travel too far - or jump in and out of fast travel - to get there. This would offer up the space exploration that is part of Starfield's core gameplay without breaking up the story too much, essentially fixing one of the main complaints players have had about the main game.