Starfield's Shattered Space expansion out in autumn, "city map stuff" due soon

It's been a while since Bethesda's had anything significant to say about Starfield, but that should be changing soon - not only is the sci-fi RPG's Shattered Space story expansion now confirmed to be gearing up for an autumn release, a new free update is right around the corner.

Shattered Space first reared its head last June, when it was bundled into a couple of Starfield special editions for release sometime this year. And Bethesda's Todd Howard, speaking to Kinda Funny Games (thanks VGC) has now narrowed that down, confirming the expansion - which promises new story content, new locations, new gear, and more - is coming "in the fall".

But there's more Starfield stuff happening too, with Howard also revealing a new free update will "get announced in a few days this week" ahead of the usual Steam beta. That puts its arrival around a month and a half after March's update, meaning Bethesda is still managing to stick to last year's promise of releasing new Starfield updates "roughly every six weeks".

And as for what this latest release will bring, Howard teased "a lot of stuff", elaborating that the team "redid the map stuff, so we have some city map stuff." This will hopefully address Starfield's much-criticised, bafflingly useless city maps, which are currently presented as a couple of icons on some bumpy topography - no helpful street layouts or buildings in sight.

Players can also expect some "great stuff for ship building" too, although it's not entirely clear what this might be. Howard offered no update on Bethesda's intriguing previous promise of "new ways of traveling", but hopefully we'll hear more on that later this year.