Starfield: Shattered Space is Similar in Scope to Fallout 4: Far Harbor

Starfield has received some major free updates in recent weeks and months, and though more of that will obviously follow, the game is also set to receive its first paid expansion later this year in the form of Shattered Space. A recent trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this month offered us our first look at the expansion, revealing that it will have players travel to the city of Dazra on the mysterious House Va’ruun’s hidden homeworld. Speaking in a recent interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays, director Todd Howard has offered some more brief details on the expansion.

Howard has, for instance revealed that the bulk of Shattered Space is going to be set entirely on a single new planet, all of which is going to be handcrafted, which means players can expect the sort of design that Bethesda’s RPGs are usually known for, which Starfield itself largely lacked, instead favouring procedurally generated planets for the most part.

“The bulk of that expansion pack, once you get to the city and the planet, it takes place there,” Howard said. “It allows us to build a landscape like we would traditionally do, and have the city and the quest.”

Howard went on to add that Shattered Space is going to be similar in size and scope to Fallout 4’s Far Harbor DLC, adding that that sort of scope will allow Bethesda to deliver annual paid story expansions for Starfield.

“Content-wise, we’re looking at kind of like what we did with Far Harbor on Fallout 4,” he said. “We’re like, okay, this is a score that works for our development in doing this kind of annual story expansion type of thing, so we’re really excited about that. And it lets us kind of do some things the way we would in previous games and give people not completely that experience, because it’s still Starfield, but this new kind of alien world that you’re able to explore.”

Far Harbor was, of course, a sizeable expansion that could last anywhere between 10 and 20 hours, which means Bethesda is looking to add a hefty chunk of new content to Starfield every year- though there’s no word yet on exactly how long the company intends to keep that going, especially with development on The Elder Scrolls 6 gathering steam as well.

Starfield is available on Xbox Series X/S and PC, and has surpassed 14 million players to date. Shattered Space is rumoured to be releasing this September.