• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Starfield: Shattered Space | Review Thread

Draugoth

Gold Member
starfield_t1D1mSX.JPG

Game Information​

Game Title: Starfield: Shattered Space

Platforms:

  • Xbox Series X/S (Sep 30, 2024)
  • PC (Sep 30, 2024)
Trailers:

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Critic Reviews​

Forbes - Paul Tassi - 6.5 / 10

Yes, this is “more Starfield,” a game I liked, but I am very disappointed in the way it has barely evolved a year later, and the best thing about is Bethesda going back to a Bethesda-like zone structure. That’s good, but also feels very inauthentic to what the game was supposed to be. This is not going to convert anyone, nor may it satisfy many veterans. I did get some pretty screenshots, though.
Gamer Social Club - DeMandre Pressley - 7.5 / 10

Shattered Space was a fun experience for me. I enjoyed exploring Va’ruun’kai as well as seeing how the reclusive House of Va’ruun operates. I had fun going through the different quests as well and it was refreshing to not have to jump from planet to planet all the time. Unfortunately however, there’s still a lot of the more annoying aspects of Starfield present and it feels like they missed a few opportunities. While not too short, the overall content just doesn’t feel as beefy as Bethesda’s excellent expansions from other games in terms of payoffs.
Guardian - Luke Holland - 2 / 5

Bethesda's gigantic space RPG's first major expansion only highlights the game's fundamental limitations
Pure Xbox - PJ O'Reilly - 5 / 10

Starfield: Shattered Space is a big disappointment in almost every way. We loved the base game, for all its flaws, and we were willing this to be the big, exciting DLC drop that'd make us love it all over again. However, what we've got here is a very average narrative expansion that fails to add any big choices, upgrades, new enemies, biomes, loot or anything that could potentially excite or draw in new players. It's buggy, janky, badly acted in places, and there are a myriad of bugs and performance issues to be ironed out. What a missed opportunity.
XboxEra - Jesse Norris - 9 / 10

Starfield’s first expansion is an excellent dive into one of the game’s key pieces of lore. There are answers to be had and mysteries to be born anew. It is all wrapped up in one of the best looks I’ve seen in a video game to date. For any fan of the base game, this is a solid 10+ hour adventure you do not want to miss.
 
Last edited:

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I’ll give it a shot myself but pretty disappointed in the objective aspects.

Game badly needs more loot and variety in general.
 

Luipadre

Member
Its terrible. I played it for like 2 hours because i got it with the deluxe shit. Its boring as hell and plays like a 15 year old game. Dunno what are the expectations from the next TES, but dont get too excited lol
 
Last edited:
I’ll give it a shot myself but pretty disappointed in the objective aspects.

Game badly needs more loot and variety in general.
Hasn't this been the thing with all their games? People gave elder scrolls a pass, in skyrim because the rest of the world was good, but the loot has always been shit. Why because they skimp out on it. They had what 7 base melee weapons, axe, two handed axe, sword, dagger, two handed dagger and mace (maybe I am forgetting some), but where were the clubs, spears, rapiers, lances, halberds, different types of swords. It was all the same with a magic property or "gain x for 10 seconds until for 20 charges. Their gear and loot was boring without mods. It was the same way in Oblivion. They also only had 1 dude make all the dungeons in the whole game of oblivion. Plus reusing 5 or so voice actors.

Fallout was much better with variety of loot, still could of been better. From what I read starfield was the same way. They don't know how to make enough unique gear.
 

damidu

Member
jeez just kill it with fire, you are basically sabotaging any goodwill people would have for TESVI at this point
 
Worse than Concord! Eh, I'll allow it since this expansion is pretty shit. Wrapped it up today and it was another huge embarrassment from Bethesda.

They need new writers/designers.
 

ZehDon

Gold Member
General consensus seems to be that it's actually a good little DLC... but it costs half the price of the base game for some reason.

At that price, not adding new mechanics to expand on the base game experience, and doing nothing to address the issues with limited POIs and huge amounts of loading screens, definitely feels like a missed opportunity.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
What would it take to turn this game around?

One mega update to do what?
More loot, rework progression, add more variety to the procedural generation content. Stuff like that would help.

The fundamental issues will never get fixed.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
And gaming execs have the nerve to talk bad about the consumer. This isn't our fault! How is it even possible that this is bad?
I’ve speculated that Bethesda is a victim of their own success after Skyrim. That game was absurdly successful and allowed them to grow at a rapid pace. The grew so big, so fast that it had a negative affect on the quality of their games which we started seeing with Fallout 4. Since then things have gotten progressively worse. I believe it’s a combination of resting on their laurels, employing people who aren’t passionate about their work, and bad feedback loops in the creative process.
 

Bry0

Member
I only just started it, I haven’t played starfield since launch month. They seemed to massively improve the color grading and lighting which is cool, but wow the game truly feels like a fallout 4 expansion pack in space. The rest of the industry blew Bethesda by.
 

Clintizzle

Lord of Edge.
What would it take to turn this game around?

One mega update to do what?
The design of the game is outdated at a foundational level. At a technical level, they would be creating a whole new game.

The criticism around the writing is also not something that can be fixed. It's not the writing that is bad because there are some people who love the writing in the game. The mass mainstream audience is not set up for or cares for that style of writing. It's just boring and uninteresting for those that aren't into the lore (which there is a lack of) .
 
What would it take to turn this game around?

One mega update to do what?

For me, less doors/loading screens. More randomized points of interest. Maybe incorporate user created ones somehow via official patches, and not making people search mod pages.
 

Bkdk

Member
Craziest thing about this is bethesda's devs are likely paid much better than your average game dev yet this is all they manage to come up with. MS could hire a team of modder in loverslab with a better end product.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
I only just started it, I haven’t played starfield since launch month. They seemed to massively improve the color grading and lighting which is cool, but wow the game truly feels like a fallout 4 expansion pack in space. The rest of the industry blew Bethesda by.

Same here, fiddling with the HDR settings really makes the beginning look great. That and being able to unlock the framerate on console now.

I'm not sure if the old school design will bother me. When I played first time around the 30fps really bothered me on my oled TV, so that's one less thing to constantly push me back.

I'm going to give it another go.
 
Top Bottom