Introduction:
Shattered Spaced dropped on to the scene on 9/30/24 and has come under fire with a lot of mixed reviews. I played nearly every mission of Shattered Space and visited almost all the POIs between the two characters there, and I have a few things to say about the DLC. This blog is going to showcase what I love about the DLC and what I think could change with the DLC.
When I first got the Shattered Space DLC, several people, myself included, were like, how the hell do we get to Va'ruun'kai? there wasn't a direct way to get there. Come to find out, you have to go to an empty star system, in my case it was Nirvana, and dock with a starstation there named Oracle. Once that is done, you proceed through that mission and then your ship, your crew, your companion (if you have one), pet (if you have one, I had Chomper with me), and myself all get starjacked when the Oracle grav jumped to Va'ruun'kai and you have no choice but to go along with it. That was definitely a unique touch to getting to a planet.
Landing At Va'ruun'kai:
Once you are on Va'ruun'kai you are warmly greeted with a gun barrel to the face. Ahh, such hospitality is rare now adays. I digress. Moving on to the introductions, yada yada yada. Typical hey stranger, you're new, you can help save us but...that wonderful BUT, yo have to become like us...yeah...ok...It was bad enough when we were shoehorned into joining Constellation. I wished we had the option of, 'I won't join your club but I will offer my assistance in helping you find these artifacts and go on my merry way.', but that isn't the case, and it isn't the case here either.
Here you must go through the ceremony of becoming Promised. I did all the ritual crap on the first go around with my NG++ girl, and entirely skipped ALL of the ritual nonsense on my big guy. After being shoehorned again, it was time to head out and get a mission and explore the moon. FANTASTIC! Let's do this! I was eager to see what it looked like.
I had Sam with me with my NG++ girl, because she's married to him, and he had a lot of commentary on it which surprised me. Sarah, who is traveling with my big guy because she's married to him, really didn't have a lot to say about the place. I was expecting some really extensive dialogue from her because Vlad and her KNOW Andreja's a spy. I thought that was kinda flat. Now before I get comments saying, well where's Andreja? Why didn't you bring her? I TRIED, oh how I tried to bring her with the big guy but she was POed at him because he did a gravity wave on a bounty in Akila and well, Andreja is still stewing over it and refused to speak with my guy. As far as my NG++ play, Andreja was at the Lodge and I simply didn't go get her. I wanted to have the in-game spouse with me and I was happy to have his company. He and I operated on the same wavelength so the company was perfect. Besides, I'm not one to jump on the bandwagon of bringing Andreja along to see if she "might" say something about Va'ruun'kai. I just wanted to see what the place was like and do the missions.
First Impressions:
First off, the pinks, reds, purples, and blues tones were cool for the first short playthrough. After that, the colors kinda got on my nerves. I had a hell of a time knowing when it was light or dark because everything on my plays were bright. I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see paths, light poles, fences here and there, and little piles of debris off the side of the road, like you would see in a normal game. This brought me back to World of Warcraft days. This, THIS was how Starfield was SUPPOSED to look! A smaller map with A LOT to do!!
The vortex enemies sucked, in a semi-good way. They were tough to kill, which is fine, but the teleportation they would do was both challenging and irritating. I don't know how many times I damn near flew off my office chair (no joke!) from a sudden enemy showing up. I play sniper, every character, sniper role no matter what. It's not common practice to have an enemy jump so damn close to you all of a sudden when you're looking through your scope. Do I wish all the enemies were like this, hell no. I have no problem of how the enemies are in base game. The DLC ones were next level. I'm neutral on how I feel about that. I don't hate it and I don't love it.
Using the REV-8 was a bit of a pain for me, and I used it once or twice total during my whole time there. It was just easier for me to use the Personal Atmosphere power and weigh myself down 1,000 pounds or more with stuff and dump it at the spaceport under my ship. I later installed the Lodge Safe with no max capacity and was grateful I did because I ended up putting everything in there and getting rid of my crates. :) If you don't have it, its a mod and I suggest you get it, because it solves the problem of the ship being overloaded.
The Great Serpent religious stuff was driving me a bit crazy. I just wanted to put earplugs in and not listen to it anymore. They definitely get into the whole serpent thing way too much, and boy howdy if you say anything against it, you could end up losing your life. Sounds a bit tyrannical to me and I couldn't handle that full time. I couldn't wait to finish the missions and leave.
Missions and storytelling:
The main mission as a whole was ok. I felt it lacked something. We still never fully understood what the Vortex is, how they came to know about it, if it's related to the Unity or the Artifacts, or even Starborn. I can't quite place my finger on it though and makes me wonder if another DLC is in the works. The End Quest was a royal pain in the butt. When you kill Anasko, he should STAY dead, not reappear with 3 full bars of health surrounded by ten+ vortex phantoms...I about rage quit on the final mission because of it and because my arrows/blue dot both didn't show up to lead me out of the place. I kept dying because I was literally flying blind...The final mission literally took me over 3 hours to do with all the vortex phantoms and Anasko not staying dead and finding my way out.
The several side missions were great. I REALLY enjoyed the Misthaze Cavern POI (it's honestly not a mission but a fun side side-quest) because of the scavenger hunt within it. It's huge, you get lost easily if you don't know where you're going, and even though the items in the scavenger hunt is menial at best, the fact you get to have a scavenger hunt at all was a complete blast! I think we need more of this type of thing incorporated into the game. Just sayin.
It seems like in the base game and the DLC both, the side missions have the most compelling of the stories than the main storyline itself. Not sure if this is normal in the gaming world or not, but it's just something I have noticed throughout Starfield.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, it is a good game. The DLC was more like a game was supposed to be. It literally showcased how the layout was to be for all of Starfield. I don't understand, and honestly I didn't think of it until I saw a reddit post about it, why Jemison, Mars, Akila, and a few other places didn't have more than one main city. Hell, they don't have pathways with lights and fences even and these places have been around AWHILE! You can't fly everywhere. Just wanted to point that out. The DLC map layout needs to transfer over to the base game. More paths, more light posts, more fences and crap along the roadway. It's literally in every game (New World and Once Human being some of the newest have this).
Is it worth $30?, well that depends on the person. Just like the $7 Vulture mission I did. Was it worth the money? I have 7 characters and if the mission is spread over the 7 characters, it would be $1 per character and seems reasonable. If you have only 1 character and got it, then maybe in your eyes $7 is a bit steep and it's completely understandable. The $30 isn't too bad. My husband has paid more on expansions that offered less. Again, it's truly up to the person buying it.
I think the DLC showcased what Starfield COULD be and SHOULD have been to begin with. I like the DLC. I see nothing wrong and give it a solid 8 out of 10. The base game, however, gets a solid 6 out of 10 and it's for A LOT of reasons and that's for another blog.
This concludes the blog of my thoughts on the Shattered Space and a little bit of Starfield. I hope you enjoyed the DLC. I think because a different set of people designed it (and it shows in a good way) gives me hope that any future updates for Starfield will change the layout of the base game. Add roads, add lights, add fences and crap, add more POIs, add scavenger hunts, and more cities on habitable planets/moons. My husband said he would rather explore 1 planet with a lot of stuff on it than 1,700 with nothing and I am inclined to agree, and it's not because I'm married to him but through gameplay myself. It just makes sense.
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