Todd Howard says Starfield's Shattered Space DLC launches this fall, and a "big update that's coming really soon" has city maps and shipbuilding improvements

Starfield
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield: Shattered Space, the big story expansion for Bethesda's space RPG, is launching this fall, and Bethesda boss Todd Howard says there's another "big update" coming much sooner with a host of requested features.

"Shattered Space is in the fall," Howard says in an interview with the Kinda Funny Gamescast. Previously, the expansion had only been confirmed for 2024, so that narrows down the release window quite a bit.

On top of Shattered Space, Howard says "we have a big update that's coming really soon for Starfield." This update will feature some "gameplay options that we're adding," as well as "other display modes on console that people have asked for." The update also delivers "some great stuff for shipbuilding," and Howard says "we redid the map stuff - so we have some city map stuff."

Starfield's map has been perhaps the most widely criticized thing about the game since launch, and the devs first teased a city map update back in December. It looks like the patch is finally coming soon: "I think it's gonna get announced in a few days actually this week, and be up on Steam beta," Howard says, emphasizing that it "should be" announced this week.

As for when Shattered Space will be properly unveiled, Howard plays coy, saying "We're going to have some stuff to show… I can't say." All eyes will, of course, be on the Summer Game Fest schedule for 2024 when it comes to this kind of announcement, but we'll just have to wait and see if Bethesda uses that venue to show off the expansion.

Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 actors say their games are "easily" better-written than many TV shows and films they've worked on.

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.