I replayed all of Starfield for Shattered Space DLC

When Shattered Space released I was deep inside Dragon Age The Veilguard, so it wasn't until very late last year that I finally picked up Starfield again. And then played nothing but for over two months. At the point of writing this it's been almost a month since I stopped playing, but I've been distracted from blogging. 

So I wasn't all that happy with my original character which brought me to the decision to simply replay the entire game from the beginning with a new character to eventually play the DLC, rather than do it on my old character. For this playthrough I also added a bunch of mods, and if you know me it's mostly UI changes and added questlines, nothing that changes the game too much. Same deal when I mod Skyrim. 

So I made a new character and started my journey, went through the entire main quest until the point of no return, all side quests, companion quests, mod quests etc, before I jumped into the DLC. Doing this was probably a really great choice because going through Shattered Space as a worshipper of the Great Serpent was eye-opening and there were so many dialogue options related to that single trait which wouldn't have been available if I wasn't devoted to the Great Serpent. And of course I had Andreja with me the whole time I was playing this DLC.

The Oracle starstation was hell. Not because it was bad but because I really really hate the no grav environments. I hate navigating them and I hate dealing with weapon recoil in them during battle. But aside from that what happened at the Oracle starstation was pretty cool and definitely invited more questions and, to me, incentive to find out more. So off we go to the Va'ruun homeworld.

Va'ruun'kai is crazy beautiful, though. With it's pink/purple sky and ebony-like creatures. I was in awe throughout most of time there. That promo picture of a citadel? It's really real. It really looks like that and it's so pretty *w* The new grenades you can make with the remains of the new Vortex enemies are really cool, and generally I enjoyed the new enemies and the reasons for how they came to be. The Promised were nice little mini bosses (or just really tough enemies) scattered throughout the world.

The main quest of the DLC then has you complete a pilgrimage followed by being accepted by each of the Houses. So, so, so many parallells to the Morrowind main quest omg. Once all of that was out of the way most of the main quest would be completed, but it should have given you incentive to explore the area and pick up a bunch of sidequests which give you more on the people and culture of the Va'ruun'kai, which in turn gives you background for how did we get to this point?! There are some real choice and consequence sprinkled in there. You can flood an entire farm as the end result of one quest or choose to save the farm, but then you'll have to stick to the status quo in the place you're at, which uuuuh... probably isn't good in the long run. Which is the lesser evil? Up to you.

The DLC has multiple endings, the impacts of which aren't readily noticeable in true Bethesda fashion. Which ending you get is up to you and the implication of each of them are some pretty great changes for the Va'ruun as a whole. 

Throughout the main story you'll get to interact with the Speaker, and each and every one of those interactions gave me strong Dagoth Ur vibes. There's really so much Morrowind in this DLC. Generally, the Va'ruun is just how they inserted Elder Scrolls into the Starfield universe. They worship the Great Serpent (that's just Satakal) and their society is run by Houses (that's just Resdayn). Not to mention that the name of the Va'ruun Ambassador in New Atlantis is Bal'Mor. Balmora. All Elder Scrolls clues. There's a lot more, but you get the idea. I really wanted to post a Va'ruun prayer or chant to the Great Serpent to pick it apart with Elder Scrolls lore, but I can't find a written version and I don't fancy watching a bunch of Youtube videos in the hopes of finding one so we'll have to make do without it. Why doesn't every game have a UESP?

After I finished the DLC I decided to play enough that I unlocked the last few achievements I was still missing. One of them was to get to level 100. I was around level 85 at the time and figured I could just do mission board things until I got to 100, but that became really repetitive really fast. So I went through the Unity and started all over again in NG+. And then I continued playing way past level 100 while waiting for Avowed to drop. 

Unfortunately, my Steam installation corrupted halfway through this playthrough, when I was mostly done with Va'ruun'kai, and I lost almost all of my screenshots.