Skyrim's biggest myth has been debunked after 13 years

One of Skyrim’s most popular theories has been debunked and squashed over 13 years since the debut of the game.

Many players will have found themselves, at some point, wandering through the wilds following after a fox that seemed to be leading them somewhere. Many gave up because the fox kept walking. Did the fox ever lead players to anything good?

How many secrets can one game hold? If it's Skyrim, then there are too many to count

No. No it didn’t. According to comments on a Reddit post about the fox, there are two possible theories on why the fox didn’t lead you to anything good.

The first is reported in the top reply which states that the Wiki explained it was a bug in the pathfinding of the fox.

“The fox tries to get so many polygons away from the player. You know what has few polygons? Open empty terrain. You know what has lots of polygons? Detailed locations. The AI will prioritize nearby locations because it thinks it's getting farther from the player.”

Essentially, the fox would just keep walking, leading you nowhere.

In the next top reply, it’s explained as a bit of a joke, “It's also related to the fact that you can walk about 50 yards in any direction in Skyrim and probably find some treasure.”

So, if you ever found yourself thinking that the fox would eventually lead you to a massive haul of treasure, then sadly you were wrong.

This is something that has appeared in other games, most notably, Ghost of Tsushima, that also features foxes you can follow. Thankfully, in this game you do actually have something to show for the detour.

You have to wonder if the bug stayed in the game because the devs found it funny that players would follow the damn fox for ages seemingly discovering nothing except more trees.