Highlights
- Starfield is set to be a massive game, with a main campaign lasting 30-40 hours and around 1000 planets to explore, giving players ample content right from the start.
- The game features an extensive array of gameplay systems, including ground combat, ship combat, space exploration, ship customization, and more, adding to its already expansive nature.
- While a post-launch DLC expansion titled Shattered Space is planned, it may not have a significant impact due to the abundance of content in the base game, which players may still be exploring when the DLC is released.
A game that's been in development for the best part of a decade, Starfield is finally almost here. Review copies are out in the wild, it's only a week until early access begins, and the hype is at an all-time high. Very soon, fans will finally be able to get a ship of their own and take to Starfield's skies, and they'll be able to judge for themselves whether Bethesda has lived up to expectations. But the work for Bethesda isn't over when Starfield launches.
Along with any patches needed to fix any probable bugs in the game on launch, Starfield is also set to receive at least one post-launch DLC expansion. Titled Shattered Space, this expansion will apparently add a new story to Starfield, along with a few new gameplay features that Bethesda hasn't detailed just yet. But while it's great to see that Bethesda clearly has faith in Starfield's longevity, its Shattered Space DLC might already be in a bit of a tough spot, with the game having more than enough content to begin with.
Starfield Might Not Need DLC Straight Away
From everything fans have seen so far, it seems safe to say that Starfield is going to be a gigantic video game. According to Bethesda, Starfield's main campaign will be at least 30-40 hours long, and that's not including any of the game's side content, which there's presumably a ton of. Starfield will also apparently have around 1000 planets to explore, and while only 10% of those will be populated, that's still 100 planets that players will be able to explore freely and interact with in a meaningful way. Even if these 100 planets feature just a handful of buildings, that's still a lot of open ground to cover.
But it's not just Starfield's open worlds that are expansive. Starfield is set to feature a plethora of complex gameplay systems, all interweaving with one another. There's ground combat, which in itself has a few different melee and ranged systems in play. Then there's ship combat, space exploration, ship customization, potential space races, and a whole slew of other gameplay systems that Bethesda is still presumably keeping under wraps. Starfield will also feature an extensive trait and skill system.
All the evidence points to Starfield being an absolute juggernaut of an RPG, and one that players can presumably spend hundreds of hours enjoying. And with hundreds of hours of content already available from the get-go, it makes the concept of a story DLC expansion a bit redundant. Though it doesn't have a release date just yet, it seems likely that Starfield's Shattered Space expansion will launch early next year, and if that's the case then it seems like a safe bet to assume that much of Starfield's player-base won't be finished with the base game's content by the time of the DLC's release.
Releasing at the start of September, Starfield has a pretty clear stretch both leading up to launch and following it. But come October, the video game industry is about to get a whole lot busier, and anyone who hasn't finished Starfield by then will probably eke out its runtime for as long as possible while jumping between the rest of 2023's releases. So, when Shattered Space does eventually release, it likely won't make too much of an impact as many players will still be exploring Starfield's base game galaxy. With over 30 hours of main story content already, and presumably a lot more through side missions, an additional story DLC doesn't seem all that exciting, at least not in concept alone.
Starfield will be available on September 6, 2023, for PC and Xbox Series X/S.