Steam tells me I've spent 171 hours of my life to this point playing Starfield. It's not an insignificant amount of time, but it pales in comparison to how long I've spent with the myriad other works of developers Bethesda. Said devs now look like they might have fired up the tease rocket for the space RPG's second major expansion. If they have, the very little they've shown off so far hasn't gotten me right on board to play more.

Almost a year since Starfield's first DLC, Shattered Space, unleashed its spooky gunk, Bethesda commemorated the second anniversary of the game's release by tweeting the short video below.

Celebrating two incredible years in the #Starfield. 🌌

Thank you to everyone who has explored the Settled Systems with us. We look forward to the adventures yet to come. pic.twitter.com/AeWN8DVlO2

— Starfield (@StarfieldGame) September 5, 2025

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Yep, the piss filter of teaseage was whipped out, with fans rearranging the frames in such fashion that they read "Terran Armada". Naturally, the conclusion jumped to by plenty of folks is that this could be the name of the second expansion the developers have had set in stone for a while, but haven't said anything about beyond that.

The name suggests a fleet of ships from or somehow related to Earth, and if that's the case, my feelings are best summed up by a straight-faced shrug. As much as judging a Bethesda DLC by the name's pretty pointless, in the absence of any other info, the idea of an expansion focused around Earthly matters doesn't get me too excited.

DLC2 is titled "Terran Armada".
byu/Sklain inStarfield

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Let me outline why. With its relative lack of aliens outside of hostile planet-dwelling creatures, a fairly dry and scientific NASA-inspired brand of sci-fi, and the fate of Earth being a key thread in its main plot, Starfield feels to me like it's done plenty of Earthy stuff already. It's even done the idea of a ship full of folks from Earth randomly popping up to beef with the residents of the Settled Systems. Remember visiting Paradiso on Porrima II, then serving as the middleperson between the resort and the Earth Colony Ship Constant, the latter of which had somehow managed to roam through space encountering nobody else for about 200 years?

I do, and it was perfectly meh. That's not to say a DLC couldn't put a twist on a tale like that or find another, intriguing way to revamp the relatively featureless sand-ball that was Starfield's ruined Earth. However, as I outlined when I reviewed the Shattered Space expansion at my former home, my view's long been that the best way Bethesda can utilise Starfield DLC is to paint a bit more colour and vibrance onto the canvas of an impressively vast but often quite bland universe.

On the one hand, that first DLC was about snake worshippers on a purple planet, so you can argue that for variety's sake trying to go the weird and alien route again wouldn't be ideal. Though, I reckon at this point you might as well embrace the out-there ideas. No one DLC's going to rehabilitate Starfield's reputation from would-be masterpiece that didn't measure up to the endless hype, to universally beloved sibling of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout juggernauts.

A sequel would have that chance, though, assuming it arrived before the actual heat-death of our universe. So, why not go after the strange and unique, as those other Bethesda-helmed series I've just cited have in some of their strongest and most memorable moments, both in the publisher's hands and outside of them? Even if the game ends up being a one-off, have it go out with one or a series of supernova explosions, rather than the cosmic whimper of an aging comet.

We'll just have to see which of those "Terran Armada" ends up being, assuming it's a DLC tease and not just Todd Howard's lunch order.