It’s 2023, and that means Bethesda’s Starfield is finally ready to make landfall on Xbox and PC. While we know the game will be with us sometime this year, the developer is keeping tight-lipped on when exactly we will get the spacefaring RPG. So, fans are keeping themselves busy by dissecting last year’s gameplay reveal trailer to seek out any new details or clues. As it turns out, there is one feature that everyone overlooked, and it involves some sleight of hand.
According to a thread posted in the Starfield subreddit (thanks PCGamer), players will be granted a pickpocketing option when close to enemies and other NPCs. In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of the trailer, the player is shown taking on some enemies in a dark facility. One enemy comes running up to the player, and if you pay close attention, you will see the option to pickpocket flash on the screen.
Of course, the player opts to kill the enemy instead of patting them down. However, the “pickpocket” option then changes to “transfer” allowing you to loot the corpses of your enemies. So, if you really want to take someone’s gear, just shoot them. Or reverse-pickpocket a nuke into their inventory, that should do the trick.
Of course, now that this feature has been spotted, fans are sharing how it can be used to take down enemies. And terrifyingly, from putting a black hole grenade in someone's pocket to stealing their oxygen supply, fans have no shortage of ideas on how they'll slaughter their way through Starfield.
After discovering this feature, I did re-watch the gameplay trailer and it really is hard to notice unless you are looking for it. It makes you wonder why Bethesda would tuck that feature away and not advertise it. Or at least make it more noticeable, as it would have been nice to see exactly how it plays out during combat.
While the pickpocketing feature may have gone overlooked, it is not surprising that the game will let you be a thief. Stealing has always been an option in Bethesda’s big open-world titles like Skyrim and Fallout. Plus, it seems that most space games depict humans as ruthless as soon as they leave Earth’s atmosphere. Apparently, we all end up ravaging, scavenging, and stealing amongst the stars.