At Gamescom Opening Night Live, Bethesda announced the release date of the first Starfield expansion, Shattered Space, along with a short trailer and the surprising early launch of the new vehicle in the game. Available in-game now for all players (talk to your ship engineer), the Rev-8 packs major Mako energy, with the shock absorbers working overtime on rocky ground (and yes, it has a gun too).
Since then, launchers have been the most requested feature for Starfield, for the obvious reason that this game involves a lot of huge planets that you have to traverse on foot. That’s probably one of the reasons that the exploration becomes a bit boring in the endand it just feels a little strange that in a galaxy full of spaceships and super technology, no one thought that a car of any kind could be useful.
“In a way, you have a vehicle, so obviously a spaceship, that you can fly around in space,” Bethesda boss Todd Howard said at the time. “But on the surface, you have a jetpack that you can upgrade, which is a super fun, new experience for us.”
That reasoning satisfied virtually no one, and it turns out Xbox boss Phil Spencer was among those who weren’t convinced. Spencer stopped by Xbox’s Gamescom stream to say all the usual things about how great the Xbox offering looks, before noting that his presence at Gamescom has prevented him from trying out the Rev-8 (Timestampfirst spotted by GamesRadar+), and he pestered Todd Howard to make it happen.
“Oh, and I’m here, so I’m not doing it: my buggy in Starfield,” Spencer said. “I asked Todd about vehicles. ‘Come on, Todd, I want vehicles in this game. I’m tired of walking around this planet.’ I thought the trailer for it looked really good last night, so I can’t wait to drive around planets in Starfield.”
Bear with me: There is a cartoon series called Llamas with hatswhere one of the most amusing things is Carl the Llama declaring he’s done something terrible and Paul the Llama saying “Caaaa-rrrllll!” I like to imagine Phil Spencer sitting in his office in Redmond, surrounded by neatly folded and ironed gamer t-shirts, using his personal hotline to get connected directly to Todd Howard and complain about space buggies: “Come on, Toddddddd!”
You can chug around in Starfield’s Rev-8 now, while Shattered Space launches on September 30. The expansion will explore House Va’ruun, a “strange space cult” that “believes in an eternal space serpent,” and seems to have some kind of spooky cosmic horror feel to it. Rev-8 appears several times in the trailer, so expect the expansion’s campaign to put a lot of work into him.
