Starfield fans are convinced that the plot of the RPG's Shattered Space DLC is hiding in plain sight

Starfield: Shattered Space
(Image credit: Bethesda)

A big Starfield update lands this month, and the video teasing that patch might have just revealed the plot of the RPG's big Shattered Space DLC.

Towards the end of the video introducing Starfield's May update, which you can see below, there's a montage showcasing various Bethesda devs working on upcoming content for the game. In one shot (at the 4:50 mark), we see a screen displaying a particularly wild-looking alien landscape as a dev moves around a few towers on the map.

It did not take long for fans to zoom way in on the text displayed on screen and realize that these objects are all labeled "Varuun." That, of course, references one of the big Starfield religions in House Va'ruun, the strange cult that worships an apparently quite bloodthirsty god called the Great Serpent. This discovery generated posts with titles like "It’s confirmed Shattered Space is a House Varuun DLC."

"Confirmed" might be stretching it, but it's looking like a safe bet Shattered Space will focus on House Va'ruun in some notable way. The story of the cult never really fully came to a conclusion in the base game, and players have been speculating for ages that they'd be a big factor in Shattered Space. Plus, a setting with that strange purple sky and weird alien effects seems like just the kind of thing to generate intrigue for a big expansion pack.

Todd Howard says Shattered Space is set to launch this fall, and it's likely we'll get a meaty look at it as part of the Xbox Games Showcase in June. In the meantime, the big May update is going to include new difficulty options, a 60 FPS performance mode on console, and some long-awaited improvements to the RPG's maps.

Starfield's May update just convinced me to try this RPG again, and all it took was proper maps and The Sims-like ship decorating.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.