Starfield player accidentally picks up alien hitchhiker in game-breaking glitch

Of the numerous bugs still present in Starfield, various objects attaching to ships during takeoff procedures have become increasingly frustrating. Yet, for one player earlier this week, the issue was further escalated by a hostile creature choosing a bad time to hitch a ride.

In quite frankly hilarious images captured and posted by the user on Nov. 24, the “Hunting Cagebrain” in question sits atop their vessel’s hull. Although just chilling out, its very presence has completely broken the game due to engaging restrictions enforced by nearby enemies.

The more concerned among the community quickly sympathized with the player. “I’d be very interested in hearing the technical reason why random things are constantly getting stuck to peoples’ ships,” one player mused. Another player shared they too had suffered through a similar bug requiring console commands to fix. “I had a ship stuck in my ship,” they said.

There are cute oddities and then there is this. No player should ever have to resort to the game’s coding in order to restore their gaming experience in the vanilla product and had this issue occurred on a console instead of on PC, such an easy fix may not have existed at all.

Some of the more technically minded responders believe this glitch might come down to a mix-up between what the game identifies as the player and the ship as entities. If the two are seen as one and the same, then the creature could think that it is occupying the same area as the much smaller player model. Whatever the case might be, the post’s author later revealed they had to roll back to an earlier save file in order to resolve the issue.

This all said you can’t help but laugh at the sheer lunacy of what happened. “Unless you have ranks in Zoology, do NOT attempt to get it off,” one player jokingly advised. The author could also see the funny side of their misadventure. “Don’t you dare tell me what I can’t do with my alien hood ornament!” they rebutted.

The big question now is whether this will get fixed at all. As we have previously covered, Starfield is losing its initial player base fast, and mixed-to-negative ratings have flooded Steam as fans are struggling to remain engaged. Here’s hoping Bethesda’s Shattered Space DLC has something cooking for Starfield fans.

In the meantime, I hope the alien creature attached to the ship is at least paying for gas.