Starfield’s Boundary Reached, Explained

Players around the world are more than ready to dive into the interstellar universe of Bethesda’s Starfield. As the official release gets ever closer, many of the info leaks that have found their way to the masses have simply been even more positive reinforcement and hype for the game. However, one particular leak that has since been monikered online as “boundary reached” is creating confusion and even concern among the tentative player base, as it’s alluding to a seemingly intentional misconception of just how “open world” Starfield will actually be. To get a clearer picture, here is our explanation for Starfield’s “boundary reached” controversy.

Where Did the Starfield ‘Boundary Reached’ Leak Originate?

Expectations have seldom been higher for another game in recent memory than Bethesda’s massive sci-fi RPG Starfield, which even briefly overtook Baldur’s Gate 3 in Steam sales. It’s already breaking and surpassing several technical boundaries encountered by other incredible titles in its archive, such as of course Skyrim and Fallout 4. With a new IP of such magnitude, the standards have literally become astronomical, and the hype has inevitably pushed out one leak after another ahead of the game’s release next week.

While many of those leaks have only bolstered that hype, one that appeared sight unseen in the past day or so has sparked a very unexpected, premature criticism of the game that is raising some eyebrows and some questions about how “open world” (or universe, rather) Starfield actually is, at least compared to what Todd Howard and Pete Hines have so far alluded to in promotional tweets and interviews.

Deemed the “Boundary Reached” leak, it originated from a Chinese forum discussing the game as well as leaked gameplay footage on YouTube, which has since all been removed due to copyright strikes from Bethesda. Whether this is somehow tied to Darin Harris, the now-arrested individual who stole dozens of copies of Starfield and also leaked footage himself, is not certain.

Either way, this leak seemed to show “boundary reached” in a box prompt that pops up on screen when the player reaches an “invisible wall” of sorts on a planet while exploring. There’s no clear indication of where this is taking place in the game, whether it’s during the tutorial or the actual main campaign. Bethesda has since claimed that the game opens up way, way more once the story gets going. Either way, it could possibly hint that entire planets may actually be broken up into loaded instances, and players may be asked to either open their map to load the next instance in front of them, or return to their ship to land in a different instance on the planet.

How True is the Starfield ‘Boundary Reached’ Leak?

Either way, this leak has since spread to many mainstream discussion forums, including Starfield’s own, with players and bystanders alike voicing their opinions on what it could mean, and how it would impact gameplay in their eyes. One side of the table is taking a rather pessimistic approach, claiming that Starfield leads Howard and Hines have deliberately misled fans with promises of seamless exploration on planets, no matter how big they are, and that this “revelation” of sorts all but ruins the game on principle.

The other side that seems to be the majority at this point, has a universal opinion of “if so, so what?”. If there are loaded instances on a giant planet, so what? Do players absolutely need to have seamless, uninterrupted travel on a world that may take up to an hour to get around, and may not even have that much to explore anyway? If you simply need to pass a brief loading screen to go to the next ‘section’ of the planet, how does that constitute a broken promise of open world exploration?

Many have also questioned the merit of this leak, since it’s not made clear exactly where the screenshots and footage are taken from in the game, and others have deemed it an attempted smear campaign before Starfield’s release. ‘Karim Jovian’ gave an amusing take on Twitter about the situation, while noting that the smear video he’s referencing inaccurately referred to a mysterious man named “Tom Howard”.

As to our own understanding of whether open world exploration will in fact be instanced or not, there has been no official public announcement from Bethesda as a whole, or from TODD Howard or Pete Hines specifically, to contradict the leaked claims. Rather, there’s only been a legal reminder from a Bethesda rep to reviewers to stop disclosing information before the embargo lifts. Nonetheless, some of those reviewers are still coming forward to vaguely assure the masses that what’s been “leaked” around the internet is not accurate. Paul Tassi of Forbes bluntly responded with, “nobody knows what they’re talking about.”

At this point, we’ll simply have to wait out the perpetuated controversy and drama as the game prepares for launch, and Bethesda clearly has their sights set on making sure their biggest project to date rolls out as smoothly as possible.

That concludes our guide for the explanation of Starfield’s “boundary reached” leak. We hope this provides some clarification of the situation ahead of the game’s release, and let us know your thoughts on the matter. Do you think it’s all hot air? Even if it’s not, would loaded instances ruin the experience for you?

Be sure to check out all of our other guides for Starfield, such as this handy in-game feature for how to check which planets are barren and which ones aren’t.