Starfield
I feel like I summoned Todd Howard himself yesterday when I wrote about how much more work Bethesda would or should sink into Starfield before focusing purely on projects like Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5. Well, Howard went on Kinda Funny yesterday and laid out at least some new information about what’s coming in the game. Well, sort of.
The big headline is that Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion was at least mentioned for the first time in ages, and Howard says it will be out in fall of this year, giving no further information about it. That would mean it’s at least a year after the game itself came out, which I mean, I think that’s fine, but again, it seems like we should know at least something about what it’s meant to contain by now.
The rest of his Starfield segment goes over future additions to the game and news of an upcoming patch. I feel like somehow this has offered even less info that past statements about this content, but he said:
- There will be new display modes on console (not elaborated on, possibly 40 fps mode)
- There will be new shipbuilding features (unclear if just UI changes but I would also guess new pieces)
- City maps (at long last, though inserting these eight months after the game has been released is wild from a timeline perspective, that should have been rushed for the first update ages ago)
- New gameplay and difficulty options (“new gameplay options” could be anything, though I wonder if it contains the new means of traversal that were mentioned previously, that everyone believes are land vehicles. New difficulty options, provided an option is “harder,” which is certainly necessary given how absurdly easy the game gets at high levels even at the hardest difficulty).
- Additional “surprises” (no clue)
Some specifics of all this are going to be announced this week for a patch soon, though I’m not sure if this is the patch that’s going to contain all this stuff, or if it’s all being rolled out over time. Regardless, I maintain the pace of post-launch support for this game even for pretty basic quality of life stuff, much less content additions, has been glacial. That may be about to change, and I’m curious if it will respark interest in a game Bethesda says they want people to play for years. I think if nothing else, the Shattered Space expansion will certainly be a big moment for it.
We’ll see. Nothing said here really seemed that attention-grabbing to me honestly compared to past things we’ve already known, but I suppose he wasn’t going to spill everything during an interview like this. Hopefully more official info is coming soon.
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