Shattered Space’s map has been compared to Starfield

Starfields Shattered Space DLC represents an expansion to the game’s base map, adding new locales for players to explore. As is traditional for Bethesda DLC, downloading Shattered Space Effectively unlocking a new area for players to visit, populating it with the quests, landmarks and NPCs that make up its history. Players need to travel to a new section of space to start the DLC, and they’ll likely stay there for the entirety of their run.

With nearly 1,700 planets to explore, Starfields map is large and boring. This is mainly due to the procedural generation of the planet, which ensures that the same points of interest are repeated infinitely throughout the galaxy. regardless of its size, Shattered Space Takes a new approach to map design. Exploring it provides a completely new experience, compared to what players have come to expect StarfieldBut its relative size is still impressive.

Shattered Space’s map is significantly smaller than Starfield – but it’s still big

The DLC focuses on a single system

Shattered Space Is not quite on par with the base game of Starfield When it comes to map size – it is noticeably smallerFocusing almost entirely on a single small star system. It contains two planets, one large and one small; The larger planet also has five moons, while the smaller one has two. If the base game has roughly 1,700 planets, the DLC is less than two thousandths the size of the overall map.

However, the majority of the action in Shattered Space Takes place on the planet Va’ruun’kai, the home world of the enigmatic House Va’ruun religious faction. like Starfield As planets go, Va’ruun’kai is a big oneEasily raving locations like Akila or Jemison. It centers on a major city, Dazra, which is full of Va’run followers. This will serve as the player’s home base for much of the DLC; It has almost everything else major Starfield Cities have, including the merchants and crafting facilities they need to create Shattered Spaces new recipes.

Except this time, It is a huge piece of the planet Just waiting to be explored. The surface of Va’ruun’kai is dotted with 50 different points of interest. Some of these are man-made, like satellite settlements, important archaeological sites of House Varun history, and, oddly enough, a Changx. Others are naturally occurring, like mineral-rich caves or natural phenomena. While a few are visited as part of the main quest, many of them are also related to side quests, or are left to the player to discover as they travel the planet.

In terms of other Bethesda DLC, Shattered Spaces file size is one of the largest ever. It’s not quite as great as the average Bethesda base game (let alone Starfield), but when it comes to DLC, his map is pretty impressive. Although the amount of time each player will spend on it may differ depending on how many side activities they complete, most players will find Shattered Space One of the biggest DLCs ever released for a Bethesda game, both by surface area and by potential playtime.

Shattered Space features more handcrafted environments

A different approach from Starfield’s map

Shattered Spaces map may be smaller and more condensed than StarfieldIt’s like a whole, but it’s not all bad. The relatively small map size is due to its nature as an entirely hand-crafted map. Base Starfield Uses procedural generation to design most of his map. This means that The great majority of its planets are not fully designed by human hands – Instead, they are machine-made, randomly generated based on an expansive set of parameters.

This is The real reason behind much of StarfieldS Lackluster map design. Identical, cookie-cutter POI repeats because they’re designed to be generic, can be slotted into any number of procedurally generated planets. Large, empty spaces sit stagnant between landmarks because the computers that generated them couldn’t take into account a player’s boredom while attempting to cross them. The result is a world that feels cold and meaningless, and it’s just not fun to explore.

That’s not the case for Shattered SpaceAlthough. Every element of the DLC’s map is hand-craftedFrom its general layout to the points of interest that exactly its surface. Since it is man-made, player experience was a major design consideration. Shattered Space Also relies less on open space travel, another aspect of Starfield Routinely criticized for its dullness. It will not fix Starfields base game, but it will offer something more in line with initial player expectations.

This is a return to form for Bethesda, whose previous games were notoriously easy to get lost in. Players are meant to wander Shattered Spaces map in a way that is just not believable in the base game Starfield. They will rarely, if ever, be found on completely barren planetsWith the nearest landmark miles away, and being forced to fast travel somewhere else. They are actively encouraged to go from point A to point B on the Rev-8, or even on foot, and incentivized by the new things they discover along the way.

As a result of this, Players can spend even more time exploring Va’ruun’kai than they will exploring any of them Starfields other individual planets. So while the actual size is microscopic compared to the base game, it feels much larger than it actually is.

It bears repeating that Shattered Space It’s not a small DLC. It may be dwarfed by the rest of the galaxy, but even compared to similar Bethesda releases like Fallout 4s Nuka-world And For HarbourIt’s huge, and will certainly keep players busy for a long time to come. Its hand-crafted nature makes Shattered Space‘s Va’ruun’kai one of the best maps available in StarfieldEven if it’s just a tiny sliver of the overall world.