The first Starfield expansion has already been confirmed

Starfield
(Image credit: Bethesda)

The first Starfield story expansion is called Starfield: Shattered Space.

At the end of the Starfield Direct, Bethesda took us through the Starfield Collector's Editions and pre-order bonuses. Among those, the Starfield Premium Edition was confirmed, offering five days of Starfield Early Access, a skin pack, a digital soundtrack and artbook, and something called Starfield: Shattered Space, referencing the game's "first story expansion."

There's a lot to unpick there, and very little detail to go with. Shattered Space is clearly setting us up for post-launch content, and it seems that we might be looking at something in the vein of Skyrim's larger Dawnguard and Dragonborn expansion. 

However, the suggestion that this is the 'first' Starfield expansion could point more firmly towards a collection of Fallout-style efforts. Bethesda and Obsidian tended to release a collection of slightly smaller narrative efforts for those games, although Fallout 4's Far Harbor was a notable exception.

It'll likely be a little while before we find out more - the Starfield release date is still several months away, and I'd be surprised if we saw Starfield Shattered Space substantially before 2024. Given how much Bethesda had to show off in that Starfield Direct, however, I'm not surprised that it's looking to cram as much as possible into the game - we just saw Star Wars-inspired ship combat, the biggest city Bethesda has ever built, and Starfield ship customization that can make ships you can turn into actual Transformers.

The ever-lovely Skyrim grandma just got her Starfield cameo.

Ali Jones
News Editor

I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.