Summary
- Starfield players may encounter strange and unexpected scenarios, such as a fight club among NPCs, showcasing the game's unique and unpredictable content.
- The combination of complex systems and vast open-world environments in Bethesda games often leads to both fun and frustrating bugs, adding to both the charm and controversy surrounding these titles.
- The presence of a fight club involving generic NPCs and a powerful Spacer Beast hints at potential glitches that generate entertaining moments for players.
A Starfield player discovered a strange "fight club" among NPCs that delivers more questions than answers. Starfield is a massive game, utilizing procedurally generated content to fill some of its 1,000-plus planets with interesting content and encounters. Even after playing dozens of hours, Starfield players will discover and experience scenarios that others may never have themselves. This strange Starfield fight club is one great example, combining a random encounter with what's very likely some unknown bug.
Part of what has made Bethesda games so popular over the years has also been why Bethesda's games are often so controversial. These big, open-world experiences require thousands of hours of work to fill with interesting content. To help flesh out its games, Bethesda creates systems of interactivity that ensure encounters are unique and surprising. But this mix of huge worlds with complex systems also leads to strange bugs and errors – some of which can be fun, but some that can be frustrating too.
Player wayneshmayne recently had a great example of a strange Starfield experience in-game that blurs the line between intended content and buggy gameplay. A clip they shared on Reddit is titled "Can anybody explain what's going on here?" And includes a video of their strange encounter. They walk up to a hostile ship that's just landed on the planet they're on. The back of the ship opens and inside is a group of NPCs all fighting with each other, most using unarmed combat. After they're defeated, the spaceship lifts off back into the sky.
Of particular strangeness is that three of the four fight club participants are generic NPCs, all with the unsettling title of "Human." A fourth NPC is named a Spacer Beast and wields some heavy weaponry. Perhaps this Spacer, a member of a faction of scavengers and criminals, kidnapped these random humans and they are now fighting for their freedom. That doesn't explain why they're fighting each other, however.
Comments on the post are resoundingly positive, as other Starfield players laugh at the randomness of the event. "These moments make me love the game," said one player, and another added, "That's not a bug, it's a feature!" These types of entertaining bugs, if it even is a bug, add a lot of charm and uniqueness to Bethesda games. Starfield is just the latest example.
The best guess for why this happened has to do with how Starfield chooses enemies for these types of random spaceship encounters. What's in the back of the spaceship is likely pulled randomly from a list of potential encounters in Starfield's files. There's likely an errant list entry or an entry that bugs out in very specific circumstances, that spawns multiple hostile humans without weapons. The result is a proper Starfield enemy spaceman fight club.
Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.