Good news, Starfield's Shattered Space DLC won't be the end of the road when it comes to expansions

If you're looking forward to digging into Starfield's Shattered Space expansion when it arrives later this year, you're in luck, as Todd Howard's now confirmed that Bethesda's got a second bit of DLC plenned in to follow it. Also, it sounds like BGS has adopted an approach to Shattered Space that should deliver something which won't involve visits to a bunch of barren, boring moons.

As its first proper trailer at the Xbox Showcase earlier this month confirmed, Shattered Space is all about House Va'ruun - the faction of giant space snake worshippers that a lot of folks were hoping the studio would do more with. While we'd gotten a taste of the overall theme, Howard's now provided some details as to what to expect from the expansion on a practical level.

In an interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays, the developer revealed that developement work began in earnest on Shattered Space once the studio had released the base game. He went on to outline that one of the things that Bethesda "liked about [the DLC] from the get-go" is that once you reach House Va'ruun's home planet, "the bulk" of the expansion takes place there.

"It allows us to build a landscape like we would traditionally do, and have the city and the quest," he explained, "Content-wise, we're looking at kind of like what we did with Far Harbor on Fallout 4, this is a scope that works for our development in doing this annual story expansion type of thing." Howard also added that he sees the decision to focus on building a more handcrafted envirmoment for the DLC, as opposed something like the often fairly barren procedurally generated planetscapes that the base game drew a lot of criticism for, not solely as a reaction to that player feedback, but as something the studio also wanted to do.

In terms of what'll follow Shattered Space Howard suggested that the idea of yearly expansions going forwards has some appeal, but that how much DLC Starfield gets, and whether that amounts to yearly releases continuing into the long-term, will come down more to the team continually having good ideas for new things they want to add to the game.

"I would say we want to, more or less, yeah. How long that can continue? Hopefully a very long time," he said, "We're planning for the one after this so there will be another one. I don't know that our goal is to answer every question [regardingthe cadence of Starfield DLC]. We sort of look at it and say, 'Hey, what's a good angle? What do we want to add to the game as far as an experience or a tone?'"

So, there you go, at least one more bit of DLC after Shattered Space, and that expansion hopefully felling a bit more like the kinds of things that most of us are looking for in a Bethesda game exploration-wise.