Starfield Shattered Space May Answer One Of The Game’s Biggest Mysteries

Summary

• Shattered Space DLC has the potential to provide answers to unsolved mysteries in Starfield.
• A trailer confirmed that House Va’ruun, a religious group, will be explored in the expansion.
• There are still several unanswered questions regarding Starfield’s main mystery, the Artifacts, which could be addressed in Shattered Space or future expansions.

Despite being able to play hundreds of hours of Starfield, there are still plenty of mysteries left unsolved by the end of the main campaign, even with the cyclical New Game Plus-esque mechanic letting players explore completely new universes and revisit moments from the story. Hopefully, the upcoming Shattered Space DLC – which is due to launch in Fall 2024, roughly a year after Starfield‘s initial release – will help provide some answers through its new storyline and content.

[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Starfield.]

Shattered Space was announced before Starfield even launched, with its inclusion in the Premium and Constellation editions of the game being used as a further incentive to upgrade. After plenty of speculation and a tease in a developer video, a proper reveal trailer at Summer Game Fest 2024 confirmed that Shattered Space would lean more heavily into some of the horror aesthetic some parts of Starfield had while exploring the mysterious House Va’ruun, a highly religious group that is situated in a yet-to-be-disclosed Star system.

House Va’ruun Was An Obvious Choice For Starfield’s First Expansion

Opening Up A New Part Of The Map And Diving Deeper Into Established Lore

House Va’ruun is the third interstellar government to have formed in the Settled Systems, and players can uncover information surrounding its lore through various conversations – particularly with the romanceable companion Andreja, who was a member of House Va’ruun before joining Constellation – and other items found across the galaxy-spanning map. House Va’ruun was formed by the passengers of a colony ship that launched from New Atlantis in 2190 and was reported lost before revealing themselves as a fully-formed government in 2230, and follows a being known as “The Great Serpent.”

Although it tried to restore its reputation after its former leader Jinan Va’ruun declared an all-out war on the rest of human civilization – which has since been referred to as the “Serpent’s Crusade” – House Va’ruun has since withdrawn into isolation by the time Starfield‘s main story takes place. Despite running into some particularly aggressive Va’ruun zealots, players were never able to visit their base of operations in the base game. Starfield establishes that House Va’ruun is situated in the capital city, Dazra, on the planet Va’ruun’kai, but the group goes to great lengths to keep its Star System a secret, even going as far as to withhold the jump coordinates from its own agents. Instead, these agents are dropped off at random locations to carry out their missions with practically no support and can’t return home until their superiors deem their mission complete and send a ship to retrieve them, further ensuring they don’t know the route.

Players’ backstories can also be linked to House Va’ruun’s teachings, as the
”
Serpent’s Embrace
” trait
states that they were raised worshiping the Great Serpent.

With enough lore to serve as a base, but plenty of questions left to be answered, it makes sense that Bethesda would choose to focus on House Va’ruun in its first full expansion for Starfield. However, there’s one major mystery that ties directly into the plot of the base game that could still be explored.

One Of Starfield’s Main Mysteries Still Needs To Be Solved

Tying Into The Main Plot Of The Base Game

From the opening moments of Starfield, players encounter one of the game’s biggest mysteries: The Artifacts. The rest of the game sees a quest to acquire all 24 of these, bringing them back to Constellation to study them, seeking answers as to how they factor into the universe as a whole and how they can be utilized for space exploration in the future. Players also find themselves either having to negotiate or fight Starborn such as the Hunter and the Emissary, who also seek to claim the Artifacts.

It is revealed that each Artifact is part of an ancient alien device called the Armillary, which forms a map of the cosmos and assists players in reaching the Unity, where they can become reincarnated as a Starborn and begin Starfield‘s story again in another alternate universe with this pre-existing knowledge of major events. Despite this, the game never elaborates further on who created the Artifacts, Armillary, or how the Unity came into existence, thus creating the Starborn, regardless of how many playthroughs players embark upon. While the Starborn do have slightly more knowledge about the Artifacts and Armillary, even they don’t know how they were created.

Artifacts also grant players special powers, which can be upgraded after passing through the Unity.

Considering how this is a major plot point in Starfield, there’s certainly the potential for it to be addressed in one of the game’s expansions. With Shattered Space covering one of the more religious groups in the game – and potentially not just its zealots, who have twisted the traditional teachings to justify violence against “non-believers” – it’s possible that House Va’ruun may have its own theories about the creation of such items and the multiverse, potentially tying into the mythical entity of the Great Serpent.

Todd Howard Previously Stated Not All Of Starfield’s Mysteries Will Be Solved

But More DLC Is On The Way

Alongside confirming that another Starfield expansion is in the works – with hopes for many more to come – Bethesda’s Todd Howard did reveal that Bethesda’s mindset when approaching future expansions is to consider what they can add to the game in terms of an “experience or a tone,” rather than to answer every question players may have after finishing the base game. While this explains Shattered Space‘s more horror-esque aesthetic, those hoping that every mystery will be solved will likely be disappointed.

While answers surrounding specific factions may be provided, the creation of the artifacts and the lore behind the multiversal Unity may be too vast for Starfield to cover satisfactorily. Addressing this mystery would essentially answer the question of not only “who created the universe?” but also who created every other multiversal timeline. Hopefully, players won’t have to wait too much longer to find out, as Shattered Space is due to launch in Fall 2024, which is only a matter of months away as of the time of writing.