How Shattered Space Finally Made Starfield Feel Like Skyrim in Space

It’s funny how a single phrase can define expectations for an entire game. When Todd Howard described Starfield as “Skyrim in space” back in 2021, the gaming community ran wild with imaginations of dragon shouts replaced by alien powers and endless handcrafted dungeons scattered across the cosmos. The launch version didn’t quite hit that mark. But then came the Shattered Space DLC in late 2024, and suddenly the comparison didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Now, in 2026, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Shattered Space was the missing piece that finally injected some of that classic Bethesda magic into Starfield.

One of the biggest shifts was in combat. Base Starfield heavily favored firearms, leaving melee enthusiasts out in the cold. Shattered Space addressed this head-on by making swordplay and unarmed builds far more viable. New blade-focused perks, armor sets, and enemy types turned close-quarters fighting from a gimmick into a legitimate playstyle. Players could finally live out the space-barbarian fantasy: charging at zealots with a vibrating serrated blade felt raw and powerful. While the skill tree never reached the sprawling depth of Skyrim’s 18 skills and hundreds of spells, the freedom to craft a dedicated melee character without feeling constantly underpowered was a massive step forward. Swinging a sword at the new shambling horrors of Va’ruun’kai offered that same visceral, weighty satisfaction as cleaving through draugr in a Nordic tomb.

Then there were the factions. In the base game, groups like the UC Vanguard and the Freestar Rangers delivered questlines that too often boiled down to repetitive fetch marathons. Their stories blurred together, offering little incentive to replay or even finish them. Shattered Space flipped the script by focusing on House Va’ruun, the serpent-worshipping zealots who had been little more than random hostile encounters. For the first time, players could explore their homeworld, engage in layered political intrigue, and shape the fate of the faction through a chain of narrative-driven missions. The quests felt handcrafted and consequential, with multiple branching outcomes that actually left a mark on the world. This wasn’t just another checklist of radiant tasks; it was a genuine story with weight, reminiscent of navigating the Dark Brotherhood or the Thieves Guild in Skyrim—each choice rippling outward in unexpected ways.

Exploration, one of Starfield’s most criticized features, received a complete overhaul in Shattered Space. The base game’s procedurally generated planets often led to samey landmarks and repetitive point-of-interest fatigue. Va’ruun’kai, however, was a single handcrafted map. Every ruin, cave, and alien grove felt intentionally placed. The landscape told stories without a single logbook—shattered temples hinted at forbidden rituals, while crimson forests hid grotesque new wildlife. With no need for constant grav-jumping, traversal happened almost entirely on foot or via the Rev-8 planetary rover. This return to classic Bethesda wandering meant players routinely stumbled upon secrets while simply traveling from point A to point B. Coming across a hidden altar that granted a permanent blessing, or falling into a pit that led to a boss encounter hours before the quest demanded it—these were the moments Skyrim excelled at, and Shattered Space recaptured that spirit beautifully.

Of course, the DLC wasn’t a perfect resurrection of Skyrim’s charm. The wider galaxy still felt sterile once players returned to explore beyond Va’ruun’kai, and the lack of real-time space flight remained a missed opportunity. But for its duration, Shattered Space proved that a denser, more curated experience could exist within the Starfield framework. It proved that the “Skyrim in space” dream wasn’t fantasy—it was just waiting for the right patch of handcrafted ground to take root.

Today, in 2026, Shattered Space is often cited as the turning point for Starfield. It didn’t fix everything, but it gave players a memorable, self-contained adventure that echoed the unpredictable joys of Bethesda’s fantasy masterpiece. If you bounced off Starfield at launch, booting it up now and heading straight for Va’ruun’kai might just change your mind. Sometimes all a galaxy needs is a little bit of Skyrim's DNA.