Any Future Starfield DLC May Need to Learn the Same Lesson as Minecraft

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 26, 2024 9 Views 6 Min Read
Any Future Starfield DLC May Need to Learn the Same Lesson as Minecraft



It’s not an exaggeration to say that Starfield is one of the most contentious AAA games of the past few years. Much like when opinions were split over the hotly anticipated The Last of Us 2, Starfield‘s public reception seems to oscillate between love and hate, with very few stances falling in the middle ground. Such strife has called into question Bethesda Game Studios’ ability as a developer, as well as the validity of certain game design choices in general.

Starfield may not be terrible, but it has certainly been enhanced by post-launch updates. Perhaps the most substantial content drop was the REV-8, which deftly and appropriately addresses the problems of slow and arduous planetary exploration; REV-8 being a free update for the game certainly helped as well. Then, there was the 60FPS patch for Xbox Series X, which further polished the experience and staunched criticisms about poor optimization, which seem to follow BGS games wherever they go. It would be nice to say that the more prestigious and costly Shattered Space DLC attracted the same praise, but this is sadly not the case. Learning from this dichotomy could be the key to Starfield‘s continued growth, and perhaps even redemption in the eyes of its detractors.

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Shattered Space Didn’t Shatter Starfield’s Bad Reputation

Whether it was fair or not, many gamers viewed Shattered Space as similar to something like Cyberpunk 2077‘s Phantom Liberty DLC, or No Man’s Sky‘s many revolutionary updates. That is to say, there was an expectation that Shattered Space would redefine Starfield‘s legacy, sanding down the game’s rougher edges, implementing fundamentally different gameplay and quality-of-life features, and just generally bringing the game closer to what audiences had in mind ahead of its release.

This wasn’t really the case, ultimately. One can debate the merits of Shattered Space as much as they like, but the truth is that it was not a revolutionary update. It wasn’t joined by, say, a total overhaul of the game’s progression system, like Phantom Liberty, nor did it institute major new features like No Man’s Sky‘s free DLCs. Rather, it was more akin to a mission pack, with a few new pieces of gear and a smattering of fresh side content. But it was still more Starfield, not fully addressing or fixing what many viewed to be major shortcomings.

In terms of optics, the fact that Shattered Space is a premium-priced DLC, when more dramatic content drops like the REV-8 were released for free, certainly didn’t help manage player expectations for the expansion.

Smaller, Steadier Updates Could Be a Better Fit for Starfield

Starfield obviously has regular maintenance patches, fixing specific bugs and the like, but its bigger, more noticeable updates have been positioned as big events. Sometimes, like in the case of the REV-8, the updates live up to this lofty expectation, but other times, like with Shattered Space, they just don’t. Thus, launching these updates as smaller, more regularly paced patches could wind up being better for both the game and its community.

Minecraft may serve as a good blueprint in this regard. Known as a game that is “never finished,” Minecraft receives regular updates with new content, like biomes, creatures, and resources, that meaningfully change the gameplay experience. The cadence of the updates has slowed over the past few years, but in the mid-2010s, the game saw as many as three a year. Naturally, Starfield won’t be as ever-evolving as Minecraft, but launching many smaller updates rather than just a few over-hyped ones could be the key to its longevity, helping to improve the state of things over time while effectively managing expectations.

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