Starfield players agree on ‘most unrealistic’ part of game—and it involves your furry friends

Nearly a week after its full release, Starfield players have now begun to sink some serious time into the space exploration RPG and are noticing many small details.

One of those details was called out in a recent Reddit thread, which is calling the bluff of Bethesda. If you’ve been scouring the galaxy looking for furry companions like dogs or cats, you’re not alone, but your efforts may be fruitless.

A recent viral tweet by the dog-loving Twitter account “CanYouPetTheDog,” which tracks whether or not you can pet dogs or interact with pets in video games, broke the upsetting news that dogs may be extinct in the world of Starfield.

“Though they are featured in Starfield’s concept art, pets do not appear to be present in the full game,” the tweet from Sept. 1 reads. “Furthermore, an item description indicates that Labrador Retrievers — and possibly all dogs — have gone extinct.”

It’s unclear how dogs, and other pets, may have gone extinct. And the in-game item only specifies that the Labrador Retriever is an “extinct canine,” so it’s possible that other breeds or animals may still exist. But they haven’t been found anywhere in the game just yet, and that’s where the Redditor takes issue.

“Hands down the most unrealistic thing about Starfield is that we wouldn’t have saved cats and dogs, humans may absolutely loathe each other but the lengths that they will go for their pets, hell even strays is unparalleled,” the Redditor said. “People will pull out phones and record someone getting jumped five-vs-one, but let a dog look lost in a park and they’ve raised 100k on GoFundMe in 12 hours.”

It’s a good point, honestly. Dogs, cats, and other pets bring out the best in humanity. They seem to make up the majority of feel-good posts on the internet, and if you’re a pet owner, you likely know all about it as your camera roll on your phone is likely 90 percent dogs or cats, at minimum.

For many humans, their pets take precedence. Dogs and cats are the lifeblood of households everywhere, including my own, purely for the sheer joy they bring people on a daily basis when life may otherwise be bleak or dull.

Even if Bethesda chose to get rid of dogs and cats in Starfield, for whatever reason, it’s likely that modders will find a way to add them to the game within the next few weeks or months. By then, players will already be chomping at the bit to fill their ships and outposts with their favorite animals.