I’m somewhat glad I didn’t get to play No Man’s Sky when it first came out, back in 2016. A media sensation about procedurally generated universes where you could go explore and find unexpected discoveries and wonders in a permanent game world, I had the vaguest feeling that it took a while for the game to properly hit the ground running, so I didn’t pay it much attention. Almost ten years later, I gave it a good look and found a really ambitious boundless universe of things to do and progression to be had, but it ultimately was overwhelming for me.
After starting in “normal” game mode, you start on an unknown hostile planet with most of your survival systems and tools damaged and the game onboards you about fixing things up by harvesting materials from flora and rock deposits using your mining beam. This part of the game was pretty fun, running around, scanning and grabbing everything I could in order to keep my life support systems working, fixing up my tools and ultimately my spaceship. I was in awe with the ‘discovery’ system where the game will track who found a planet or a new type of rock “first”. Is this true? I wondered, was I really the first person to land on this planet? Is the game generating new planets for new players, or could I have landed on a pile of space rock already charted by another player five years ago? It did say that the solar system was discovered nine years ago by some other steam user. That probably was true, right? This game really was something.
I still wasn’t sure what kind of game this would be, was it a survival game? I had to manage some shield, temperature and health meters, watch out for storms and dangerous creatures, but ultimately that wasn’t the focus of what I did most of the time. Was it a crafting game? I had to collect materials by scanning for deposits, harvesting from plants and the like, then mixing things up in a portable refiner, but at this point I still was just following the game’s instructions. At some point I fixed my ship and left on a course to another planet where I might find some answers. On one hand, it was incredibly impressive how you could leave seemlessly in your shp, with multiple levels of speeds you could engage depending on the distances you wished to travel, on the other hand I felt like my ship was really difficult and unfun to control.
Then I built a base, which was nothing more than a big box with crafting stations, research terminals and other gizmos I could build. Was this a building game? Would I be required to construct all manners of devices in order to process new materials or discover more building blocks? There were a few technology trees I had access and I started to see where this would go; I could make a network of teleporting modules powered by biofuel generators (or even solar panels, if I ever got there) and spread my little box design across the universe… But the game was pushing me to leave again to visit a space station.
There was a lot to do here, too much, maybe? Shops, missions, alien languages to learn, more shops, factions, standings and reputation, some kind of weekly challenge game mode, and probably more things I couldn’t figure out because I didn’t know alien languages at this point. All these storefronts showed me the upgraded versions of the ships I could get, the better suits, the weapons, the various modules I could potentially use someday, but all the prices were incredibly high - and sometimes in resources I didn’t even have access to. Was this a trading game? Was the whole point of everything I had done beforehand just to get me in a loop of trucking resources, trying to get the best value in some situation or another, and making money to build up a trading empire?
I explored a bit more, moved through the game’s storyline, then had to go further, in another system entirely. This galactic map was really bad, it was difficult to move around and see where I could or couldn’t go. I did some more exploration, then fought some annoying ‘sentinels’ and some space pirates. Was this now a combat game, where I couldn’t leave the atmosphere without disabling enemies in pursuit (they were jamming my warp, after all) or where I had to balance faction reputations by choosing who I dealt with and who I took care of? My weaponry wasn’t good and my ship didn’t fare much better, but i kept trudging along the storyline.
Then it hit me, this game was all of this. You could survive, build, craft, trade, fight, scour planets for artefacts, manage your reputation, pick up missions, upgrade yourself, your ship, your bases. There was a story throughline to help you get from system A to system B, but it did open up more and more to having you do things freely. That was a bit too much for myself. This is the kind of incredibly ambitious and expansive game that makes my head spin. I stopped at that point, at around the 8 hour mark. Really impressive and certainly fun, but I do not have that kind of time.
