Starfield player finds a ship landed in water, resulting in the breaking character animations

Starfield may not have been the amazing masterpiece that fans of Bethesda were expecting, but fans of the game still found plenty to love about the title. This time, the fun comes in the form of a rare glitch that happens when a ship lands directly on water, breaking the animations of everyone on board.

On the Starfield subreddit, user HEARTOFSPACE shared a look at what happens when one of Starfield’s space-faring ships actually lands on water. Of course, your own ship will never do that, as it is relegated to land exclusively on specific landing points that the game makes sure are safe enough to get off board and ready to exploring the planet at hand. So when they saw an NPC ship landing in water, they had to find out by themselves.

As it turns out, Starfield does not like it when that happens. When boarding the ship everyone on board has their animations broken, as the game tags them as being in water and thus makes them swim around the interior of the ship when moving around. However, even when they’re stationary or sitting down, the animations persist.

The game actually allows players to swim in bodies of water, but the option doesn’t really have much purpose: as far as players have explored the game, there is nothing of interest under the water for players to do or find, besides moving through in a straight line. The mechanic seems to mostly be a remnant of the Creation Engine, as previous Bethesda games have offered the ability to swim. But while in titles like Skyrim and Fallout 4 players could explore underwater, fight water-dwelling monsters, and even find treasure and materials in it, there’s none of that in Starfield.

Starfield released on September 6, 2023 to lukewarm reception from fans and critics alike. It is available exclusively on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.