Starfield's Shattered Space expansion is set for a release window of Fall 2024. The massive scale of the title in terms of its exploration perfectly compliments post-launch expansions such as this, with there being an immense amount of narrative leeway to expand the game's lore.

The Shattered Space expansion for Starfield recently got some attention at the Xbox Games Showcase, with its time at the presentation confirming the major involved factions and locations of the DLC. While Shattered Space smartly places more emphasis on one of the most underused pre-existing factions in Starfield, the title could easily take a page out of Fallout's book for its future expansions. In particular, new major groups and factions in Fallout have consistently been added to the franchise over the years, and Starfield could use its scope to do the same thing through future DLCs.

starfield player shows off their beautifully-decorated ship
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Starfield Should Use Future Expansions to Introduce New Intergalactic Groups

Despite a lot of the pre-release marketing for Starfield focusing on its massive scale, there are only five major factions that populate its vast game world. Of course, implementing even more major factions into the base game may have risked bloating the side content of Starfield, but there is still clear room for more stories to be told within the franchise.

While most of these five pre-existing factions get a fair amount of development and story content in Starfield, many fans felt that the mysterious and hyper-religious House Va'ruun did not get nearly enough attention in the game. The upcoming Shattered Space expansion for Starfield has clearly taken these criticisms on board, with House Va'ruun being at the center of the upcoming story.

Despite not getting much love in the base game of Starfield, House Va'ruun is arguably the game's most interesting faction, with its members worshiping a deity known as the Great Serpent. The isolation and deep devotion of House Va'ruun is a perfect way to instill mystery in Starfield's setting, with the game clearly having all the tools necessary to craft even more fascinating factions in the future.

Starfield's Many Locations Can Easily Give Way to New Factions

It has already been confirmed that Starfield will receive at least one more major expansion following the release of Shattered Space, with Bethesda clearly believing that there is still a lot of unexplored narrative potential for the title. While it only seems fair that Shattered Space should finally elaborate on House Va'ruun, subsequent expansions could easily introduce brand-new factions, much like how Fallout has over the years.

Fallout 's nuclear wastelands are much smaller than the huge portion of outer space that Starfield explores, yet the former has always found ways to evolve its major groups in logical ways.

While the likes of the Brotherhood of Steel have appeared in the IP for quite some time, fan-favorite titles like Fallout New Vegas owed a lot of their success to the new groups they explored, with FNV famously introducing factions like Caesar's Legion. These factions are often deeply tied to the different areas that Fallout explores, with Fallout 4's Boston setting giving way to the Minutemen faction, which is inspired by Minutemen of New England in the Revolutionary era.

With Starfield having so many star systems and planets to explore, the title is in no shortage of locations that can potentially be expanded to inspire factions in future DLCs for the game. Locational factions have been a huge part of Fallout's continued success and expanded lore over the years, and Bethesda should definitely consider transferring this ethos to its most recent release to give more justification for Starfield's massive size through any future DLCs.