Have you ever seen a Skyrim werewolf transforming in the wild?

Skyrim
(Image credit: Bethesda)

People who've played The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim for hundreds, and even thousands of hours in some cases, are just now bearing witness to a rare sight in the game: a werewolf just casually transforming in the wild.

Over on the Skyrim subreddit, user Carlini_95 shared a terrifying video of a chance encounter with an NPC called Hunter, who initially looks fairly innocent aside from the whole basking in moonlight in the middle of nowhere thing, but soon transforms into a ferocious werewolf. The player looks on in amazement for a few seconds before realizing the severity of the situation, at which point they wisely back off and draw their sword. As the werewolf charges toward the player the video cuts, presumably to spare us the carnage.

after_1000h_in_this_game_its_the_first_time_i_see from r/skyrim

Carlini_95 says it was their first encounter with a werewolf transforming in the wild - that is, away from quests and dungeons where they're programmed to transform at certain points - in over 1,000 hours of playtime. "This is my first time seeing a werewolf transformation outside of quests ever," reads the top comment with almost 2,000 upvotes. "About 15,000 hours [editor's note: wow] in the game and I didn't even know people transformed into werewolves," echoes user KingKex.

Apparently, this is just something that happens if you wander around at night in Skyrim enough and wind up in a bad neighborhood. It's uncommon enough to come across a werewolf at all, but seeing one transform seems to be a once-in-a-playthrough type thing. Imagine that! An 11-year-old game that's available virtually everywhere still revealing secrets. Not even Breath of the Wild can top that... yet.

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Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.