Waiting on Starfield, Playing Oblivion
Bethesda released Starfield’s first and only major DLC, Shattered Space, in September 2024. Since then: nothing. No roadmap, no tease, no community post hinting at what comes next. For a studio that built its reputation on expansive post-launch support, the silence has stretched long enough that a growing portion of the Starfield fanbase has quietly stopped waiting and started replaying older titles instead.
The pattern showing up across Reddit threads, Discord servers, and YouTube comment sections is hard to ignore. Players who spent months expecting a second DLC announcement have pivoted back to Morrowind, Skyrim, and most notably, Oblivion – a game now approaching its twentieth anniversary that still holds enough pull to drag people away from a brand-new space RPG. The irony is not lost on anyone watching Bethesda’s release calendar stay blank while its back catalog trends upward.
What Shattered Space Left Behind
Shattered Space was not a disaster. It added a self-contained story set on Va’ruun’kai, the homeworld of one of Starfield’s more intriguing factions, and delivered a denser, more atmospheric environment than much of the base game’s open universe. Critics responded reasonably well. The problem was what it did not do: it did not fix the structural complaints that followed Starfield from launch. The procedurally generated planets, the loading-screen-heavy travel system, the sense that the galaxy felt wide but shallow – none of that changed. Players hoping the DLC would signal a new direction for the game were left with something that felt more like a side story than a correction.
After Shattered Space dropped, the natural expectation was a second expansion announcement within a few months. That timeline has now passed by any reasonable measure. Bethesda has not confirmed additional story content, has not publicly committed to a DLC roadmap, and has been largely quiet about Starfield’s future outside of occasional smaller updates. When a studio goes quiet on a game this size, the community tends to fill that silence with either speculation or departure – and right now, departure appears to be winning.
The Oblivion Pull
Oblivion occupies a specific place in gaming nostalgia that is genuinely difficult to replicate. It was strange in ways Skyrim was not – goofy NPC dialogue, exaggerated facial animations, a world that felt handcrafted and slightly unhinged. That weirdness has aged into charm, and players returning to it now tend to describe the experience less as nostalgia and more as rediscovery. The game holds up structurally in ways that matter: meaningful guild questlines, a Dark Brotherhood arc that many still consider Bethesda’s best writing, and a main quest that, despite its urgency, never stops the player from wandering completely off-script.
The timing also lines up with active remaster speculation. Rumors about an Oblivion remaster have circulated for years, and they picked up again noticeably in early 2025, with enough credible-sounding detail to push curious players into trying the original before any updated version potentially changes how the game looks and feels. Some players are essentially racing to lock in their first or freshest memory of the classic version. That kind of pre-emptive playthrough mentality has been driving Oblivion’s visibility on streaming platforms and in community posts.
There is also a contrast effect at work. Players who feel Starfield’s universe lacks personality are finding, or re-finding, that Oblivion’s Cyrodiil has personality in excess. The world reacts to you differently depending on faction allegiance, armor choices, and reputation. Random NPCs follow daily schedules and remember interactions. The gap between what Bethesda’s older games did with a fraction of the technology and what Starfield does with current hardware has become a recurring talking point – and not a flattering one for the newer title.
This kind of catalog migration is not unique to Bethesda’s situation. Obsidian’s post-launch silence on Avowed has pushed players toward Pillars of Eternity in a strikingly similar pattern – fans who feel abandoned by a newer title defaulting back to the older game that originally built their loyalty to a studio. The mechanics of it are the same: silence reads as abandonment, and abandonment sends people somewhere they already know they’ll be satisfied.
Bethesda’s Bigger Problem
Starfield’s situation points to something wider happening inside Bethesda’s release and communication strategy. The studio is simultaneously developing The Elder Scrolls VI, supporting Fallout 76, and managing whatever future Starfield has. Resources are not infinite, and TES VI is clearly the priority. That is understandable from a business standpoint, but it creates a credibility gap when Starfield was sold – implicitly, through years of marketing – as the kind of living universe that would grow over time.
If Bethesda is winding down active Starfield development without saying so, the community deserves clarity. A direct statement that major story DLC is not currently planned would be less damaging than the current quiet. Players can accept a game ending its post-launch cycle; what they have more trouble with is being left to guess. The speculation filling that vacuum – that Starfield has been effectively shelved while the studio moves on – does more reputational damage than a straightforward update ever would.
Where This Leaves the Fanbase
The players who genuinely loved Starfield and are still holding out for more content are in an uncomfortable position. They have defended the game through a cycle of criticism, watched the modding community work to fix and expand it, and are now watching their wait stretch with no visible end point. That group is smaller than it was at launch, but it is vocal, and it is running out of reasons to stay optimistic without some kind of signal from the studio.
Meanwhile, the players who drifted back to Oblivion are not angry – they are just occupied elsewhere. That is, in some ways, a harder problem to solve than outright backlash. Angry players are still engaged. Players who have found something better to do are simply gone, and pulling them back requires delivering something that actually competes with a twenty-year-old game that, apparently, still does the job.
Bethesda’s track record with Skyrim shows the studio knows how to keep a game alive across decades. The question is whether that kind of longevity requires intentional investment or whether Skyrim’s staying power was a product of specific conditions – cultural timing, modding infrastructure, and a world that people wanted to live in – that Starfield has not been able to replicate. Right now, players are not waiting to find out. They are already in Cyrodiil.
