After no news on Starfield at the Xbox Games Showcase last month, Bethesda has finally given fans the briefest of updates on the game’s future. In the patch notes for update 1.15.222 posted on Steam on July 22, Bethesda stated, “We’re continuing work on future updates and will share more about the exciting things we have planned for Starfield in the coming months.”
They didn’t give us any hint about what “exciting things” to expect, but the update this comment is attached to doesn’t inspire confidence. It’s a minor patch that mainly focuses on stability and bug fixes, visual tweaks to the Creations menu, and sorting in the Missions menu. This pocket-sized update is still in beta, too—you have to opt into Starfield Beta updates to access it.
It’s been almost a year since Starfield’s Shattered Space DLC came out and the updates we’ve seen since then have been underwhelming at best. When Bethesda completely ignored Starfield at the Xbox Games Showcase, fans took it as a sign the game was finished. This comment in the most recent patch suggests otherwise, but its vagueness isn’t reassuring.
It doesn’t help that Shattered Space was a letdown for many players (it currently has a measly 30% positive user rating on Steam). There were high hopes for Shattered Space to not only address issues with the base game, but also offer a meaningful expansion of the world and story, one that would spice Starfield up with some of the horror elements that make the Fallout games so exciting. Unfortunately, that’s not how Shattered Space was received.
Reviewer Justin Wagner summed it up well, saying, “I was locked in for this sandbox to come to life, but instead Shattered Space delivers a bland stew of business as usual. It’s largely on rails, light on substance for the price, and committed to a narrative I’m already forgetting the details of.”
In other words, Starfield isn’t in a good spot right now, between a disappointing first DLC and a lack of meaningful updates since then. If Bethesda plans to continue updating and expanding Starfield, they better have something truly impressive in the works if they want to win back fans who have grown tired of waiting for a major update.