A few hours ago, Bethesda Game Studios released a new beta update for Starfield on Steam. As usual, interested users can check it out by selecting the beta build in the game’s tab via the Steam library. This is, however, a minor patch, as you can easily glean from the changelog:
General
- Minor improvements to format and display in Creations menus.
- Addressed an issue that could cause that Extreme Temperature gear to appear incorrectly.
- Minor improvements to sorting in the Missions Menu.
- General crash and stability fixes.
More interesting is the fact that Bethesda has reiterated its promise that ‘exciting things’ are on the way to Starfield, and more details about those will be revealed ‘in the coming months’. The development studio had already teased as much back in March, following a fairly long period of silence.
Game Director Todd Howard had previously said that the sci-fi roleplaying game would receive annual story expansions. However, the lack of any such announcement and today’s reiteration that it will take months before we hear about those exciting new things all but confirms the rumor that the second expansion won’t launch in 2025 after all.
This could perhaps be tied to the allegedly delayed PlayStation 5 port. Bethesda might want to bundle a second expansion when the game launches on Sony’s console. Another side is that the developers are possibly trying to deliver a more impactful expansion after the underwhelming Shattered Space, which got a middling reception, including a 6/10 score here from Wccftech’s Francesco De Meo:
The Starfield: Shattered Space expansion offers an engaging new story but adds little beyond that. Fans of the game’s universe will appreciate spending more time in it and discovering a faction more complex than it appeared in the base game, but those who didn’t enjoy Starfield or were primarily interested in its space exploration mechanics won’t change their opinion with the expansion, as it doesn’t address the vast majority of the issues that still plague the experience.
