The first story enlargement for Bethesda’s huge, daring, rickety house RPG arrives after a yr’s price of incremental updates which have already ironed out the sport’s most egregious flaws. These quest-breaking bugs have been squished, there at the moment are automobiles to make planet-side journey much less of a chore, metropolis maps are at the least partly helpful today, and there’s now a 60fps mode for these enjoying on Xbox Collection X. However Starfield’s basic issues stay – turgid, rubbery NPCs; the baffling profusion of loading screens – however simply because the Phantom Liberty enlargement finessed Cyberpunk 2077 in its entirety, Shattered House arrives poised to enhance upon what got here earlier than.
It seems that Bethesda has acknowledged that travelling throughout house by deciding on planets from menus and watching a cutscene was a bit garbage, as a result of Shattered House principally takes place on a single map, very similar to Skyrim or Fallout. This new, self-contained narrative issues Home Va’ruun, Starfield’s barely tiresome cult of space-serpent-worshipping zealots. The participant is whooshed in direction of the secretive society’s homeworld after it has suffered a cataclysm, heralded because the civilisation’s potential saviour – which, naturally, means everybody has loads of chores so that you can do, busy as they’re standing round observing partitions or genuflecting in courtyards.
These duties vary from traversing the void between universes, to blasting homicidal electric-blue phantoms, to actually tidying up an outdated man’s manky little flat. It’s the same old initially overwhelming RPG to-do listing, and all of it, at the least to start with, feels very old-school Bethesda.
The issue is, little or no of what you’re requested to do seems to be any enjoyable. Fetch-quests that supply subsequent to no payoff are compounded by annoying journey: it’s a must to make an unappealing selection between the vein-popping frustration of making an attempt to drive throughout the craggy, impassable, boulder-strewn panorama, or giving up and shlepping there on foot. And this panorama isn’t Skyrim, or The Capital Wasteland, with discoveries to be made round each nook. It’s a Starfield planet map like another, with solely the odd cave or cookie-cutter facility to discover, and it hardly ever rewards inquisitiveness with something apart from wasted time and the urge to swear.
Any earlier suggestion that Starfield was leaning into cosmic horror in some new and fascinating method additionally seems to have been large of the mark. Occasional, very temporary sequences do threaten to conjure an environment of foreboding, however this quickly provides strategy to the identical bullet-sponge gunfights by means of the identical uninspired buildings in return for a similar loot. The unreliable quest markers really feel inexcusable, and Shattered House turns into a slog lengthy earlier than the 12- to 15-hour marketing campaign involves an finish.
It isn’t all unhealthy. The primary story is partaking sufficient, and throws a couple of fascinating decisions your method, because the three ruling homes of the planet of Va’ruun’kai vie for energy. And when the body fee is secure, Shattered House is sort of fairly, if overwhelmingly, monotonously purple. However it’s merely extra of the identical barely damaged Starfield expertise, solely with none house flight so as to add a soupcon of selection. It isn’t low-cost, both.
Maybe the subsequent package deal of additional content material will lean extra into Starfield’s strengths, quite than amplify its weaknesses. But it surely actually does really feel at this level as if most of Starfield’s imperfections are baked in on the technological and conceptual degree, and solely a full-blown sequel, quite than continued updates, would be capable to handle them. It’s solely as a result of there’s a such a vivid kernel of brilliance right here that it’s so disappointing to see Starfield’s galactic potential stay cosmically unfulfilled.
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