“Starfield saved me and my family’s life” reads the title of a Reddit post by u/tidyckilla—complete with picture of a blazing fire overcoming an apartment complex. What at first sounds hyperbolic turns out to be completely true, as one man excited for Starfield since the earliest trademark filing rumors was awake on a gaming binge when a rapidly-spreading fire threatened his home.
“On the night of august 31st I decided to stay up and play as long as possible to experience this new universe. At 2:26 in the morning, while playing the game, I heard an explosion from my downstairs neighbors apartment. I paused my game to see what was happen;when [sic] I opened the door I saw flames rising up our stairwell to our apartment,” said tidyckilla.
“I immediately got my wife and cat, rushing us to safety with only minor burns. If I hadn’t been up bingeing Starfield I would have been asleep and we would have all died to smoke inhalation. I want to thank this game from saving my family and me from a horrible fate,” the post continues.
If this still sounds hyperbolic to you, it’s a very likely scenario. Tidyckilla says the explosion was below them, and his wife did sleep through it. With the fire spreading so rapidly and sealed doors between their apartment and the fire, tidyckilla thinks their smoke detectors wouldn’t have gone off until the fire had blocked the family into their apartment. As it was, they family could neither see nor breathe during their actual escape. “Just had to feel my way out,” he said, with a “wall of fire coming up the stairs.” He noted that the smoke alarm in their apartment “didn’t go off till my wife opened the door to run.”
As for escape via the windows? “Wish we could have,” tidyckilla said. “Fire went up our front and back of our building and blew out all the windows. Just barely made it down before that happened.”
While the circumstance is a bit funny, it’s still a grim story. The poster’s belief is that a woman in an apartment below was on oxygen and also smoking—the explosion heard was the detonation of the oxygen tanks from an accidental light-up, which is fuel and heat that would also account for the fire’s immediate rapid spread.
As for tidyckilla, he and his family are at a hotel for now, where he has assured everyone that he has his xbox and is still playing. Thank goodness for small mercies.
The story is proof that Starfield is a family game, right up there with the best choice you can make in Starfield being the one that gives you parents.
Incredible find, Eurogamer.