I didn't like Shattered Space [Spoilers]

[Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ]

Here's why:

- The bad ending: Isn't actually an ending at all. You select [Submit], it plays an animation of your character kneeling like Colin Kaepernick at an NFL game, then it's a black screen and reloads you at the elevator. OK, I get it, your character is dead. But why wasn't there some type of cutscene or at least a storyboard narration (like from New Vegas) explaining what happened to the settled systems and some of the important characters and rest of the factions? How could they have been so lazy not to include some type of consequence for choosing the bad ending? Instead, it's just black screen - reload and try again.

- If you choose to kill the Va'ruun ghost leader guy, you still have the option to launch the crusades.. If you pick this option, nothing happens. It has no impact on the settled systems what so ever despite the fan boys here will lie to you and tell you it does, it doesn't. Everything is the same and NPC's just mindlessly stand and wander around as if nothing happened.

- Va'ruun NPC's look horrible with their face tattoos and piercings. I get it, Va'ruun is supposed to be a dark faction. But everyone looks like they play in some early 2000's emo band from MySpace. For me, it's just one of many things that killed the mystique surrounding House Va'ruun. And for being so "dark", they sure act like Goody Two Shoes. Only one guy from the 3 Houses wanted to launch the Crusades. Just like in the base game, no one is truly "evil" unlike in previous BGS titles.

- Why did they change the zealot armor? It looked better in the base game, the all black suit was so cool and mysterious and made them look almost alien. Now it looks like a boring generic miner suit with a light gray color palette and comically over sized helmet.

- The dialogue was so boring and uninteresting. The NPC's just drone on and on and on and on about forgettable stuff I don't care about. Long dialogue does not = great story telling. And if it does, it has to be done right like in the Mass Effect games. When NPC's talk in that game, it really captures your attention. Here, I was just yelling at my screen saying "STFU and get to the point already".

- The architecture made zero sense. You have lamp posts everywhere and then braziers right next to each other. A lot of reused assets from the base game and only very few unique structures and items. Why do modern developers feel the need to make everything look so messy and dirty and disorganized with crates and junk everywhere? Albeit OK, the citadel building at the ending interior looked incredible, which IMO is how the rest of the buildings should have looked.

- Too much stuff going on. You can't travel three feet without being attacked by phantoms or zealots or w/e else. So you can't really immerse yourself and explore the new planet without being attacked by something constantly.

- Story way too short especially for $30. Too many fetch quests. It's not even worth $5 to me.

- The mysteriousness surrounding House Va'ruun was ruined by bad story writing and bad aesthetic. That mission where you explore the House Va'ruun embassy should have been how it is instead of whatever mess we got in the DLC.

1/10.

[trevorbergershank]

Apart from your obviously too-low (presumably a 'statement' score of 1/10) I agree with virtually all of this.

Though they have created a distinct identity for House Va'Ruun in both the city of Dazra and its people, any good is almost totally undone by the swathe of terrible design decisions and unfinished concepts.

Without simply repeating the OP; as a faction they suffer from all the issues affecting the base game ones - no deep. immersive or meaningful progression, they have the same 'modern morality' of being neither good nor evil (and this can turn on a dime) and the choices surrounding them and the wider DLC are not only stupid, but they have zero impact on the game world.

It's also typical of Bethesda and this game to hide their inability to develop complex things behind the 'story' - rather than actually have Dazra as something resembling what could be called a city, we get another tiny outpost that couldn't possibly support a populace and a daft 'cataclysm' storyline - its just like how developing a systems-wide war using mechs and bio-weapons would have made their little developer heads explode so they just decided that the colony wars wrapped up before the 'events' of the game.

Not that it would have made this DLC great, but another glaring omission is the lack of a Va'Ruun ship builder/manufacturer - the guy at the 'spaceport' (I.e. single landing pad) talks about being excited to work on a ship from the settled systems yet he only sells Stroud/Eklunds - where the hell are Va'ruun ship parts? Really frustrating.

[Lemecc]

For your first point, you may or may not be interested but I'm working on a mod for this.

[Emphoise]

I do agree with the ending choices feeling rushed. A mini cut scene depicting the consequences of your choice when you go to unity would be great.

Originally posted by Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ:

- The architecture made zero sense. You have lamp posts everywhere and then braziers right next to each other. A lot of reused assets from the base game and only very few unique structures and items. Why do modern developers feel the need to make everything look so messy and dirty and disorganized with crates and junk everywhere? Albeit OK, the citadel building at the ending interior looked incredible, which IMO is how the rest of the buildings should have looked.

I didn't notice too many issues with architectures. i'm not the biggest fan of the crashed ship in the middle though.

The junk everywhere however, is directly explained by the fact that half the city got vaporized weeks ago. Can't really complain about that in terms of consistency.

Originally posted by Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ:

- Too much stuff going on. You can't travel three feet without being attacked by phantoms or zealots or w/e else. So you can't really immerse yourself and explore the new planet without being attacked by something constantly.

This is less true if you roam outside of Dazzra. The crater is a war zone with constant phantom spawns but the rest of the planet is less hectic.

I personally find frequent random encounters a very good thing.

Originally posted by Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ:

- Story way too short especially for $30. Too many fetch quests. It's not even worth $5 to me.

The DLC has a lot of content outside of the main story, (which isnt even particularly short compared to the main quests from previous bethesda DLCs). The dungeons associated to that quest are the best ever done by bethesda too. There is nothig like the scaled citadel in previous games.

[gizmo6023]

I wish the scaled citadel remained so it could be explored properly after sending its occupants back to what what ever realm they belong in.

[Corinthas]

Fetch quests is all they know..

[RasaNova]

Ok I haven't played it yet but those all seem like good points, and in line with some of my own gripes about the base game. I think 1/10 is a bit hyperbolic, but still I can get behind a well presented critique based on personal gameplay experience instead of player counts, meme youtubers, and review scores.

[LotR[Henchman]]

I expected snakes and got goats instead 0 /10 DLC - and i'm just partially joking when writing that. I'm not feeling the deeper theme of their cult. Yes goat sacrifices, drinkig and eating goat products like people living on a goat planet, and perhaps rituals and speaking about the great snake and not questioning the leader but the Cult at the Simpsons had a better setup imo than them in this DLC.

[townsgr]

I've gone back to 1.13.61 as the DLC is far to buggy.

[Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ]

Originally posted by gizmo6023:

I wish the scaled citadel remained so it could be explored properly after sending its occupants back to what what ever realm they belong in.

This or, having it as the new player home after you complete the game.