10 Recently Confirmed Truths You Didn't Know About Famous Video Games
8. Wild Foxes Will Lead You To Treasure - Skyrim
Skyrim continues to fascinate and beguile players over a decade (!) after its release, with fans still making new discoveries to this very day.
Most recently, they received confirmation of a long-standing theory in the Skyrim community, that the game's wild foxes were programmed to lead you to treasure.
Last summer, ex-Bethesda level designer Joel Burgess assured fans that their imaginations weren't getting the better of them, and the foxes were indeed pointing players towards that sweet, sweet loot.
Burgess gives a highly technical deep-dive rundown of the reasons for this, but the upshot is that Skyrim's "navmesh" AI navigation system programmed the foxes to flee players as efficiently as possible.
The eccentricities of this programming meant that the foxes would make a bee-line for populated areas like camps, and in turn often lead you in the direction of treasure.
So, it's not something that Bethesda deliberately put in the game, but the long and short of it is that fleeing foxes have a tendency to lead you towards goodies because of how the world and its AI navigation systems are designed.