With how long Starfield’s Shattered Space takes to beat, I’m convinced it could’ve been an email

Starfield’s DLC Shattered Space was too short and inconsequential for my taste. At $29.99, it packs a brief journey through the House Va’ruun, but for the price, it feels more like a glorified side quest than a full-fledged expansion.

Shattered Space takes players on a cosmic ride through the intriguing world of the House Va’ruun, a mysterious religious faction obsessed with the ominous Great Serpent.

The journey kicks off with a distress signal from a space station that, much like your motivation halfway through the DLC, feels a bit lost. You find yourself on Va’ruun’kai, the heart of House Va’ruun, where you’re tasked with investigating a catastrophic event that obliterated much of Dazra, the faction’s capital.

The DLC promises to expand on the lore surrounding the Va’ruun, exploring its founders and leaders while introducing new characters and enemies. While the environment is stunning and clearly handcrafted, the core narrative feels thin, offering mere snippets of depth when we crave a full course.

How long is Starfield Shattered Space DLC?

Dexerto/Bethesda

Here’s where the plot stays disappointingly thin. I clocked about 10 hours completing Shattered Space.

But if you could magically streamline the menu navigation and cut down the meandering planet-hopping, it might barely scrape 5 hours.

For a Bethesda DLC, the length might be fine. But in today’s gaming landscape, where we’re seeing 25+ hour DLCs like Shadow of the Erdtree and Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty for a similar price, Shattered Space just doesn’t measure up.

During those ten hours, I ran errands across the galaxy, meeting some half-baked mini factions (Houses) without much sense of engagement. They simply lack the distinctiveness of the space pirates of the Crimson Fleet or the megacorp stealth of Ryujin Industries.

More meat on the bone, please

Dexerto/Bethesda

Starfield’s Shattered Space DLC features 7 main quests and 10 side quests. Expect a few hours of questing, where you’ll chat with mini-faction leaders, investigate some calamities, and experience more running around than actual tension.

While Dazra’s beauty is worth mentioning, it’s a surface-level charm that wears off quickly.

What’s frustrating is that Shattered Space isn’t even the most engaging content you can find in Starfield. In fact, I’d argue that some of the base game’s side quests, particularly Operation Starseed, have more intrigue, depth, and consequence than this DLC.

In Operation Starseed, you’re swept into a storyline filled with historical clones and ethical dilemmas that challenge your decision-making in exciting ways.

You navigate through conflicts between factions led by historical titans like Genghis Khan and Ada Lovelace, making choices that matter.

You actually feel the weight of your decisions there, unlike in Shattered Space, where the factions you meet are as memorable as last week’s leftovers.

A soft landing

Bethesda / Dexerto

Everything you do in Shattered Space is perfectly fine – just not exactly DLC material. You’ll meet some decent characters in Dazra and run a few lackluster errands for them, whether it’s in a cave or some abandoned lab on the outskirts.

Eventually, you’ll earn enough points to dive into the final mission, which boils down to a pretty blah showdown against Zealots and Phantoms, culminating in the inevitable face-off with the Speaker, and your first non-choice: to submit or attack him.

Dying (submitting) is not an option, even if Bethesda makes it feel like one. You just get booted back to the last checkpoint and have a good think about what you just did.

It’s tough not to view this as cut content rather than an expansive narrative adventure.

In the end, the choices in Shattered Space just don’t carry the weight of the moral dilemmas you encounter in the main game.

By the time you wrap up the Shattered Space campaign, you can choose to kick off the notorious Serpent Crusade, aimed at wiping out anyone in the Settled System who won’t bend to the Va’ruun’s beliefs.

This is a choice that the game willingly presents to you – it’s what every step in your journey through the DLC amounts to. The obvious and morally correct choice is to say, “No, that’s crazy; let’s not.” But what if you’re doing an evil run and decide to kill every NPC you’ve met – just out of curiosity?

Well, I’m sorry to report – nothing happens. It’s all a façade. As soon as the final mission ends, your plans for genocide fade into the cosmic ether. If Andreja is your chosen companion at the time, she’ll remind you that the first Crusade took a decade to prepare. And if you know how this game ends, you’ll realize that none of your actions in this DLC will ever amount to anything.

At the end of the day, while Shattered Space offers a beautiful new locale and some fresh lore, it feels terribly inconsequential.

Handcrafting this planet and every location is no easy feat. Still, the lack of substantial content in this DLC leaves me questioning its value.