I accidentally reached the edge of the world which I thought was a distinct possibility with my theory on how they were pulling off this whole game structure on the creation engine. my theory is every planet you can land on has infinite (?) procgen overworld regions composed of various cells like you had in fallout 4, fallout 3, skyrim, oblivion, morrowind, etc, which the game generates wherever you choose to land, be it anywhere or with a predetermined landmark. when you land on a predetermined landmark that'll be close by to the landing area, and everywhere else is procedurally generated based on the biome type and the vegetation (non interactable), fauna and flora are spread around along with resources, plus points of interest like world traits, buildings, whatever, plus depending on the biome there's variation on rocks and terrain elevation.
I was on a coastal region, when you click on a certain pixel close-ish to the ocean you can land on a version of a biome that's guaranteed to have a beach close by and something fun the game doesn't tell you, oceans have fish sometimes! Took me a bit to figure out that if you're missing some animals to complete a planet survey and the ocean reads (0%) when you click on it, it means you need to land on a beach, there's no point in clicking on the ocean since you can't land on it, so why would you do that right?? well it's useful to see if there's fish you need to scan. you can't dive though so it almost feels like they couldn't make the ocean interesting with underwater plant life but still designed aquatic enemies for you to scan from afar and that you never get to see properly.
Anyways I was on that planet because murdering aliens is great for farming XP once you take an hour's nap and down some tea, and I was just running across the beach cause I enjoy the vibe in these coastal regions while murdering everything in sight, and at some point that popped up. to give them credit, it didn't look like the edge of the world, i.e. it wasn't noticeably less detailed, but it was, the game had it with my beach running so I just fast traveled back to the ship. kind of a funny quirk in how this game's structured, I thought it could be possible the game would put up a loading screen and load me into another overworld region but nah it just says I've reached the edge of that one and prompts me to generate another. I'm kind of amazed anything in this game works at all and looks as good as it does so don't think this post is me shitting on Starfield, I feel like if they managed to pull this off they can do anything now with Elder Scrolls VI, it'll just be a little janky which is fine. as far as AAA games go bethesda still knows how to hook me.
