Todayâs Xbox Games Showcase was a nice, healthy dose of whatâs on the horizon for Team Green (and maybe a few other platforms?). In the midst of it all Starfield, Bethesdaâs enormous space RPG with over 1,000 planets, got a nice trailer for its upcoming expansion, Shattered Space and from the looks of it, itâs clear this is the kinda style Starfield desperately needs.
As I said in my review of Starfield, Bethesdaâs big olâ space RPG was âa galaxy in search of an identity.â Impressive in its scope, and certainly capable of some very pretty space vistas, Starfield really fails to overcome much of its vanilla, paint-by-numbers approach to forecasting humanityâs future among the stars. Sometimes a low-fantasy science fiction story works well, but as I said last year, Starfield really couldâve stood to dazzle us a bit more:
[Starfield] draws more on the âgroundedâ sci-fi of material like Star Trek and The Expanse than it does the high space fantasy of Star Wars and Destiny, which isnât inherently bad, of course. However, it does so in a way that emphasizes their utilitarian view of the future while largely overlooking the elements that make them compelling. Just a dash of space opera fun could have gone a long way in livening up the gameâs tone.
One of the factions that didnât get a whole lotta love in Starfield was its very creepy, reclusive, and religiously zealous House Vaâruun faction. Though theyâd appear here and there in the main story and side quests, it was rarely enoughâespecially as they were one of the only interesting factions in the game. Warping to a new star system and hearing Vaâruun ships openly broadcasting a prayer to the enigmatic âGreat Serpentâ was not only creepy, it offered up a mystery that, sadly, the base game doesnât let you chase.
Thankfully, Shattered Space looks like it will let us chase that mystery, adding in some Dead Space or Event Horizon vibes to its otherwise very vanilla lore. The new trailer has way more color going for it first of all, with vistas that would look more at home in Destiny than what we saw in Starfield. But even the voiceovers in the trailer deliver a satisfying amount of spookiness that makes me want to learn more about these people and whatâs in store in this expansion:
Speaker 1: Hold very still and choose your words carefully. They will determine how long you live. You trespass in the home of House Vaâruun. Your fate will be decided by the Great Serpent.
Speaker 2: Can you feel its embrace encircling your heart? Constricting until there is no more youâŠOnly us.
As anyone whoâs played a Dark Brotherhood quest from The Elder Scrolls can tell you, Bethesda RPGs are often particularly compelling when theyâre dipping into the creepy side of things. Falloutâs had its share of that as well with âThe Family,â a group of people living as vampires beneath the surface of Fallout 3âs map. As with the Dark Brotherhood, having some darkness to roleplay with and immerse yourself into proved to be a lot of fun. Hopefully that will be true of Starfield as well.
Shattered Space launches later in 2024, so time will tell if this expansion gives Starfield some serious character in its colossal, sometimes too empty and drab galaxy.
