What you need to know
- Starfield's first paid expansion, Shattered Space, is currently in development and slated to launch later this year.
- In an interview, Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard confirmed that the team is preparing "Year 2" for Starfield, as well as working on a second big expansion.
- Howard also confirmed that Shattered Space has been in development for just under a year, and that the majority of the expansion takes place on the same planet and city.
- Starfield is available right now across Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, as well as being included in Xbox Game Pass.
Fans of Bethesda Game Studios' science-fiction role-playing game have more to look forward to past 2024.
That's according to game director Todd Howard, who talked with YouTuber MrMattyPlays in an interview on Sunday. Howard talked about a wide number of topics, including what is coming in "Year 2" and beyond for Starfield. Howard confirms that Starfield: Shattered Space will not be the only paid expansion for Starfield, and the team is already working on the second big DLC.
Howard notes that outside of the paid expansion, the team will naturally be working on a number of free updates, though he's not sure the six-week cadence the team strove for in 2024 will continue through 2025. The storied director notes that with the recent resurgence across the Fallout franchise, Bethesda's games are all extremely popular, with over 25 million players across all games last month.
Shattered Space is a big shift for Starfield
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With Starfield: Shattered Space slated to launch at some point in 2024 (and a new trailer being shown during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024) Howard noted that this expansion will function differently than Starfield did. While Starfield's main quests and side content sees players jumping around between dozens of solar systems, the majority of Shattered Space is set in the same location once players make their way to a mysterious city, making it a much denser experience overall.
Starfield: Shattered Space has been in development for just under a year, with production beginning right after Bethesda Game Studios shipped Starfield in September 2023, though the team had naturally discussed ideas and figured out the vision for the expansion well before then.
Analysis: I'll be playing for years
I loved Starfield at launch, but it's been wild to see how much it's already grown since then with features like 60 FPS support on Xbox Series X, as well as the rollout of Creations and Creation Kit. There's more to come, such as the promised rover vehicle for exploration, and I'm curious what the teams will be coming up with in the years ahead.
I'm also glad that there'll be at least one more big expansion after Shattered Space, and ideally we can see even more after that, perhaps at a somewhat regular rhythm of one big expansion per year. What the team showed in the recent trailer gives it an ominous, horror-focused vibe that is (almost certainly by design) extremely at odds with how the main game plays. I hope that whatever the second expansion is ends up having a similarly different tone. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to even more horror, but ideally it would be done in a very different way that what Shattered Space ends up delivering.
Starfield is currently available on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, and is also included in Xbox Game Pass. Shattered Space is scheduled to arrive later in 2024, and is included in Starfield's Premium Edition.
