Starfield’s latest Shattered Space trailer reveals new story details

At long last, just two weeks before the Shattered Space release date, Bethesda have revealed concrete details on what the Starfield Shattered Space DLC will contain. Through a brand new trailer, we’ve seen new Starfield weapons, enemies, and plenty of hints at the overall storyline. 

So, we’ve broken down everything from the latest trailer, including what you can expect to see from House Va’ruun. 

Starfield Shattered Space deep dive trailer

On Monday, September 17, 2024 Bethesda released the Shattered Space deep dive trailer. This in-depth look at the upcoming DLC provided gameplay footage, and commentary from Bethesda’s Lead Creative Producer Tim Lamb, Lead Quest Designer Brian Chapin, and many more important figures.

Starfield Shattered Space map

Unlike the base game, Shattered Space takes place entirely on the planet of Va’ruun’kai, in the Kavnyk system. According to the developers, the entire story takes place on a single map, never requiring the player to leave it. 

The landscape of Va’ruun’kai is covered in pockets of gravitational anomalies that allow the player to ascend vertically as they would in Zero-G, and features an “alien” landscape relative to the rest of the Settled Systems. 

Once the DLC has launched, you can be sure to find the entire map of Dazra City and Va’ruun’kai with all locations and points of interest marked in our Starfield maps catalog. 

Despite the developer’s promise that the DLC will largely take place on Va’ruun’kai, it appears Bethesda have also added a number of other planets to the newly introduced system of Kavnyk. It is unclear at this point in time what these additional planetary bodies will provide or how they will interact with the main focus of the DLC.

Shattered Space story

According to Lead Quest Designer Brian Chapin, both the main Starfield story and the story of the first DLC centers around humanity’s quest for knowledge. However, in Shattered Space’s case, this quest for knowledge has gone too far and backfired disastrously following a botched experiment with Grav drive technology (but much worse than what Victor Aiza accomplished). 

This experiment ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time, isolating a significant portion of Dazra City, and shunting most of the entire faction of House Va’ruun into its own subspace, cut off from the rest of the Settled Systems. 

Interestingly, you arrive on Va’ruun’kai only a few weeks following the disastrous event, known as the Vortex Incident. This heavily implies that not only are the House Va’ruun cut off from the main galaxy, but they are also cut off from the standard flow of time.

Thus, you arrive in the aftermath of the disaster, facing many citizens who have lost loved ones, a civilization running low on supplies, and a faction fractured between religious zealots and more moderate branches. 

The faction is fractured in part because the Scaled Citadel, the seat of power of the House Va’ruun, is trapped within a field of anomalous energy, and the faction’s leader, Anasko Va’ruun, is nowhere to be found. 

From what we’ve seen so far, you will resolve not only the power imbalance within the faction, but decide how House Va’ruun returns to the Settled Systems and affects your base game experience. 

But that’s not the only threat facing Va’ruun’kai. It appears that the Vortex Incident has brought a parallel world close to that which hosts Va’ruun’kai. According to Alex Laza, Lead Level Artist, “creatures from the other side can slip through” to your universe. Monsters we’ve seen so far include the Vortex Horror which closely resemble the Dungeons and Dragons Phase Spider, and ghostly imitations of humans.

New Shattered Space weapons

Shattered Space is due to place a greater emphasis on melee combat, but it also showcased a number of new weapons including an energy minigun called the Va’ruun Starstorm, and Vortex Grenades.

The new guns aside, it appears that one additional melee weapon is being added to the game, though a name was never shown. 

Given that Bethesda is “amping up the aggression and chaos of combat” we’re also curious to see if this hints at AI improvements for the many hostile creatures populating the Settled Systems. If nothing else, the creatures will hopefully have figured out how to path or climb to a target standing on the high ground. 

Shattered Space release date

The official Starfield Shattered Space launch remains set for Monday, September 30, 2024 for Xbox Series X|S and PC. There’s still no news on when a Starfield PS5 edition might become available, but it seems increasingly likely that one will be created in the near future. If so, maybe we’ll hear more about it soon after the release of Shattered Space in the next Starfield update. 

Excited for the new DLC? Make sure to tell us what you think over on the Starfield forum, and be sure to follow Starfield Db on Google News for all the latest updates.