Starfield lead told developers to leave one very specific bug in the game

With Starfield now out, modders are already beginning to use the tools that they have at their disposal to improve and change the massive sci-fi RPG in a number of ways. And of course, this being a Bethesda RPG, there’s plenty of excitement surrounding what will be possible once the game’s full modding toolset is at the disposal of the community.

«We could make a safer, less buggy, less risky game if we wanted to» harrumphed Pete Hines last week, talking about Starfield while claiming Bethesda's reputation for buggy games is undeserved. But, you see, that reputation is deserved and that's why we love them. A wise friend once observed to me that everyone talks about Skyrim in terms of grand adventure and epic storytelling, whereas for him it was a game about fly-tipping cows down mountains and watching the physics scramble to cope.

Bethesda's head of publishing, Pete Hines, has said that game bugs are inevitable and they ultimately allow the studio to lean into player freedom. 

Bethesda Softworks publishing head Pete Hines has reassured players that Arkane isn't giving up on Redfall, despite its lukewarm reception on launch earlier this year. In fact, he's confident it will be a good game people want to play on Game Pass ten years from now.

With Starfield's long-awaited launch upon us, Bethesda has been doing the media rounds to chat about the upcoming RPG. The studio has released a few buggy games in its history, so a question was eventually raised about the bug in the room – a timely subject with Starfield already releasing via pre-order early access. 

Bethesda games like Skyrim and Fallout are known for being epic open world RPGs and for being a bit buggy, but these smaller issues in Starfield also allowed the game to be so grand according to one developer.

A quick heads-up for those you hopping aboard the Starfield interstellar express today: there is a non-zero possibility that one of the game's elevators has a shark in it. That's according to Bethesda's head of publishing Pete Hines, who encountered the displaced piscine trouble-maker while playing the game before release. He's "almost positive" the shark isn't there any more - and just like that, my understanding of Starfield has been transformed. This isn't a 150 hour RPG treadmill of resource extraction, artefact investigation and base-building, wherein you give spaceship tours and put +5% on your accuracy, or what-have-you. It's an extremely slowburn horror game, with every innocent elevator potentially housing a Great White jumpscare. All of which, Hines feels, is true to how Bethesda "embraces chaos" in their games, though he does feel the company's popular association with jank and bugs isn't "particularly fair".

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The Elder Scrolls 6 is seemingly in active development, right as Starfield launches.

"[The Elder Scrolls 6] is in development," Bethesda Softworks vice president Pete Hines said when asked about whether the long-awaited sequel was still in the concept phase. "But it's in early development."

Starfield is just days away from launch and ahead of that the Bethesda RPG has seen several leaks. Copies of the game are currently in the hands of select reviewers and even some players who obtained it illegally, before sharing a plethora of screenshots and gameplay videos online. One such clip that's now causing concern for fans about Starfield's scope was first leaked on a Chinese forum, over the weekend, which suggested that a player could run non-stop in one direction for 40 minutes, before being met with a ‘Boundary Reached' message. The videos have since been removed, though players are now questioning the legitimacy of developer Bethesda's claims.

Bethesda Game Studios’ titles have a long and stories tradition of being heaven for the modding community, and titles put out by the studio has enjoyed incredibly long lives as a result of what the community has created using their modding tools. Unsurprisingly, Starfield looks set to continue that tradition.