A new video from Bethesda puts a spotlight on Tim Lamb, a long-term veteran of the studio all the way back to Oblivion. Now, Lamb has made some news, not about Elder Scrolls VI (of course), but about Starfield, of all things.
Here’s Lamb:
“[For Starfield], we have cool stuff coming, including free updates; features players have been asking for. as well as a new DLC story. Part of the team has been focused on space gameplay, we are also going to add new game systems, and more.”
Starfield was released two years ago in September 2023, and this news seems to confirm part of what was previously leaked, that Starfield was getting a new DLC. The other part of that leak was that when the DLC hit, that would coincide with a PlayStation launch, as is Xbox’s practice these days. That was not confirmed here today.
It is…kind of amazing this is happening, and I would argue not a good use of Bethesda’s limited resources when really everything should be poured into getting Elder Scrolls VI out at this point, and beyond that, the next Fallout. I legitimately can’t believe they’re doing another Starfield DLC after last year’s Shattered Space. Why?
First of all, Shattered Space was bad, and that’s coming from someone who gave the original Starfield a famously high score. It limited the action to one zone on one planet which led to an uninteresting story, uninteresting gameplay additions and uninteresting NPCs and enemies. In an age when a game like No Man’s Sky introduces totally transformative updates for its many worlds all the time, this has absolutely none of that. Here’s what I said at the time:
“Yes, it’s probably a good thing that Bethesda tried to do a more Bethesda-like thing with a custom map that feels like at least a tiny chunk of something you might find in Fallout. But everything else is ignored. Nothing new with bases or ships or space combat. No new biomes or creatures outside of the singular planet. The “new” enemies you’ll find are just regular enemies but in “ghost” form where they glow and now can teleport, obnoxiously, right next to you. There’s also a big spider thing that emerges from void portals sometimes. There’s a guy who runs at you with swords.”
Second, barely any of the existing playerbase played that expansion. This is genuinely one of the smallest bumps for a bigger DLC for a major game I’ve ever seen. Can you see it in this Steam graph?
That’s it in the middle, that tiny little bump at 21,000 players, which was only 50% more than the baseline the game had previously at 14,000. Now, it has 5,000 a day, held mainly together by a modding community. I would be somewhat surprised if another DLC two years later hit 10K there. I would also be surprised if it was as spatially big as Shattered Space.
I suppose the idea here is to create some “final” package for the PS5 launch with two DLCs and a bunch of quality-of-life and feature additions. I do not think anything all that impactful has been added to the game in two years now, though I will return to check this out as a former Starfield superfan. I hope it goes better than last time.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
