It felt like Shattered Area may lastly carry area RPG Starfield nearer to the unique promise of its sprawling NASA-punk area journey. As an alternative, the brand new growth is getting slammed even tougher than the bottom sport by early gamers, and appears set to doubtlessly find yourself being one of many worst-reviewed Bethesda DLCs ever.
Shattered Area is a $30 addition to Starfield that provides a brand new planetary location and a roughly 10-hour story marketing campaign that revolves round a science experiment gone terribly incorrect and a colony of cultists that worship a cosmic snake god. It arrives alongside one other patch for the bottom sport, in addition to different current enhancements and additions together with a free dune buggy. However the common takeaway up to now appears to be that it’s method too little, too late, not less than in comparison with a few of the pre-release hype.
Shattered Area launched on Steam earlier this week with a consumer score of “combined.” That score has since plunged into “largely unfavorable” as extra consumer critiques have flooded in. The early Metacritic rating can also be fairly dismal. A few of the negativity appears to be common dogpiling by gamers nonetheless upset over the bottom sport, however there are a good variety of extra cheap individuals explaining why the DLC could also be arising quick. Many hinge on the truth that other than the story quest, Shattered Area may be very mild on different extra content material, together with extra ship elements, weapons, armor, and different new options.
It’s clear Shattered Area can also be burdened by the bar set by different huge single-player RPGs. Some gamers hold pointing to Phantom Liberty, CD Projekt Crimson’s equally priced growth for Cyberpunk 2077 final 12 months that just about felt like a mini-standalone spin-off. Lengthy-time Bethesda followers are additionally evaluating Shattered Area to Fallout 4’s Far Harbor DLC , one other growth that supplied sprawling new areas to discover and a few peak storytelling moments.
I’ve been enjoying Shattered Area all week and have lots of ideas however will maintain them till my overview is revealed. TL;DR: it’s sophisticated. And you may go on the Starfield subreddit and discover loads of followers who loved the bottom sport and are having a terrific time with the DLC. Some reviewers are as nicely. Whereas there are definitely each good and dangerous issues about Shattered Area price highlighting, it’s clear the polarized reactions are partially a response to poor expectation-setting and hopes across the growth not simply including to the sport but additionally feeling essentially totally different from the acquainted Bethesda RPG components that creaked and strained below the burden of Starfield’s ambition.
That is removed from the tip of the street for the Xbox console unique although. Along with nonetheless possibly presumably coming to PlayStation 5 sooner or later, Bethesda has promised extra ongoing updates and annual expansions. So anybody presently dissatisfied by the seeming lack of a No Man’s Sky 2.0-style turnaround starting a 12 months after launch, there’s nonetheless time.
