Sorry everyone, I may have to do that Starfield Liker thing again for Token RPS. The Shattered Space expansion, coming September 30, probably won't restore the RPG's reputation as a total failure – but it does ditch the proc-gen planet-bloat for a single, handcrafted hell, a true Bethesda specialty honed by years of Fallouts and Elder Scrolls. And, if its sadly hands-off Gamescom showcase is any indication, it may well double down on Starfield's strengths, too.
But what I'm most interested in is leaving the empty boulder fields of the base game and exploring another big chunk of densely detailed BethRPG land. That's Va'ruun'kai: the homeworld of House Va'ruun, the serpent cult that was supposed to be one of the three major factions in Starfield's story (but was mostly represented in the game by a completely moderate cultist and a retiree holed up in his house). Shattered Space reveals that they and their planet are in dire straits: multiple subfactions, each more obsessed with serpents than the last, are vying for control, while Va'ruun'kai itself is literally falling apart. Low tolerance for gray rock? Shattered Space might just have you covered: the red and purple skies are pierced by vast spikes of planetary shards, many surrounded by smaller debris fields held aloft in gravity anomalies.
Not everything has been destroyed: at least one major settlement still stands, home to the more or less oppressed followers of House Va'ruun. But it too is under threat, and not just from the worst fanatics of the bunch. Insect-like “Vortex” enemies can burst through the tears in reality at any time, which will likely add some mild scares as you explore the expansion's other locales. I counted a blood-stained laboratory and a network of creepy caves among the new areas, and while you can point to existing examples of these areas in the base game, I'm holding out hope that their entirely bespoke nature will fill them with more secrets and stories than their procedurally generated counterparts. Va'ruun'kai may be big enough to spot in the new REV-8 buggy, but the piece you'll be exploring was built entirely by the meaty hands of human designers, artists, and writers; just like a Bethesda game should be.
Plus, yes, jump scares, blood, the occasional space ghost, you've probably seen that Shattered Space is trying its hand at horror. I'm not convinced that this game will be much messier than Bethesda's previous attempts at terror, though. My impression from Gamescom is that it's more about forcing you into tighter, faster-paced shootouts, swapping out more aggressive enemies for ones that prefer to chase you and rearrange your guts. More intense? Maybe. Scarier? Maybe not, when I always have an armored spacesuit and at least nine guns in my luggage.
This could be another positive change, though. I maintain that Starfield's gunplay can be quite fun (to play), provided you're aggressive and mobile with the jetpack. There's a dynamism to it that, say, Fallout 4 could hardly dream of. Hungrier enemies, more likely to get in close and force the use of the jetpack and quick repositioning, should therefore be a good choice.
Shattered Space's general uptick in weirdness also feels like a re-emphasis on Starfield's more eccentric aspects that were too quickly forgotten before. I beg, for example, for those massive gravity anomalies to accommodate more zero-gravity shootouts. And while it took a NG+ run to reveal the full extent of Starfield's take on the multiverse, the fact remains that this is one of the few pieces of media that's doing something interesting with the concept; something to justify it beyond “like Marvel.” The Vortex, assuming there's more to it than just popping out enemies, also promises more possibilities.
In fact, Shattered Space isn’t intriguing because of an unexpected shift toward horror, but because it suggests that Bethesda is rectifying its course. Fewer bland planets, more sci-fi spectacle. Fewer shooting tediums, more desperate three-dimensional blaster duels. And above all, abandoning the ephemeral convenience of algorithm-shaped dust bowls and returning—once again, hopefully—to a denser, better-mapped world in which we can truly lose ourselves.
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