Over the past week, there have been many controversies surrounding Bethesda’s highly anticipated Starfield, but nothing comes close to the latest ‘boundary reached’ leak, which has fans angry.
As a quick recap for the uninitiated, Starfield had a few leaks leading up to its release, including felony charges against Darin Harris for allegedly stealing 67 copies of the title and illegally distributing them. But it is the infamous “boundary reached” controversy that has become the talk of the town. In a leaked gameplay segment, gameplay videos showed “invisible walls” accompanied by “boundary reached” when hitting the edge of the landing ship’s radius, and the Internet grabbed onto it and wouldn’t let go. The photo of the warning comes from the Chinese forum site Gamer, after about 10 minutes of exploration in a video, a “boundary reached” message was received, and can be seen below.
The controversy comes from contradictions in the broad claims of Starfield‘s exploration, with Bethesda’s Pete Hines and Todd Howard claiming similar seamless exploration on the planets’ surfaces. Pete Hines’ reply to a question had fans lambasting the response, with the leaks above as proof ‘he lied’ about being able to explore planets. The X exchange (formerly Twitter) can be seen viewed below.
This is where the fan backlash comes in. There are two sides to this argument, the “Bethesda lied” side and the “this is not worth talking about” side. Critics have even jumped into the fray to debunk the “lying” claims. User JeffThreat responded directly to the photo above with “That’s from the tutorial. Jeff continued the thread with “This was known from the beginning, Todd Howard said this in a video back in June,” citing the “all of a sudden” nature of the outrage facing Starfield. The same user suggests that others simply try the game for themselves to confirm what they’re talking about.
The same goes for others, Forbes’ Paul Tassi simply said “The Starfield “boundary reached” drama is very stupid, that’s all I’ll say” echoing the sentiment from other reviewers under embargo attempting to right the ship on what’s happening without breaking their agreements. Then, there’s the other side, the allegations of lies. Windows Central’s Jez Corden seems to agree with the sentiment, stating “The half truths being spread are done in bad faith sometimes.
User DekuFinalFlash says “Tons of load screens and no ground vehicles is insane. Overhyping is not going to make these things go away. I really hope the main story is incredible cause this will be its achilles’ heel” regarding the instances of boundary reached. Others like user TWTHEREDDRAGON were more inflammatory (aside from not playing the title) with “Video shows terrible pop in and absolutely empty and lifeless world.”
All in all, it seems Starfield has hit its controversy peak right before launch, and although there is so much negative buzz surrounding the title, fans should take everything they see with a grain of salt until they play the game themselves, or fans could view more pre-launch discussion on Reddit.
Starfield launches on September 1, and CGMagazine will have a full review once the embargo lifts on August 31.
