Starfieldhas had a bit of a bum ride. At launch, Bethesda Game Studios' long-awaited space opera epic receivedlargely positive reviews, nabbing a Metacritic score of 83 in the process. While that’s nowhere near the heights enjoyed by, say, the evergreen bestseller Skyrim with its nigh-peerless 96, it was a promising enough start for whatXbox’s Phil Spencer once insinuated that Starfield would be receiving large-scale updates for a dozen years.
But it’s been a long road, getting from there to here. On Steam,Starfield has retained an unenviable ‘Mixed’ player rating.And while many had hoped the ship would right its course with the first big expansion,Shattered Space, is stuck at ‘Mostly Negative’. It wasn’t the partial reinvention that this flawed galactic adventure desperately needed. Lead writer Emil Pagliaruloeven took to Twitter afterward to reassure folksthat “nobody, and I mean nobody, at Bethesda is patting themselves on the back while ignoring our players.”
The Second Expansion Must Mark A Turning Point, But Probably Not In 2025
Shattered Space arrived slightly over a year after Starfield itself. In an age when AAA games typically take so long to release, getting it out this swiftly was a decent sign that the dedicated post-launch team would support Starfield with ample vigour. It stands to reason, then, that 2025 felt like the proper timeframe for a second expansion, which, following the broadly lethargic reception to the first one, desperately needs to be a hit with the game’s dwindling audience.
But time marches on, and it’s starting to seem probable that Starfield won’t be getting that second expansion this year, after all. In a recent post on the gaming forum website ResetEra,reliable insider NateTheHatereaffirmed the project’s existence, but dashed most hopes of it debuting any time reasonably soon.
“Another DLC expansion is still to come – though it doesn’t seem like it’ll make 2025 at this point.” -NateTheHate
On the glass-half-full side, I suppose it was never a guarantee that Bethesda would even have the chance to get any further expansions out to begin with. Not only has Starfield been incapable of maintaining the kind of long-term interest momentum that the developers had anticipated, but with all of those recent Xbox layoffs promptingthe outright cancelationof at least a couple of eagerly-awaited upcoming titles, it isn’t much of a stretch to envision a reality in which all future Starfield content gets canned.
Nevertheless, the clock is ticking for any lingering chance that Starfield can fight back and mount the sort of public-image turnaround that Bethesda has previously pulled off with the online-basedFallout 76. I’m still looking forward to a second expansion, but I’m just not sure how many former Starborn are even with me on that.
