MaKTaiL
Member
Introduction:
Hi everybody! This is my first time doing a LTTP so I'll do my best to make it into a good reading for everyone. First things first: I'm a sucker for space exploration games and I had my eyes on No Man's Sky since it was first announced back on The Game Awards. The inital backlash after launch and other games I wanted to pick up at the time prevented me from buying it right away. Time passed and I totally lost interest in it. It was not only until the latest patch, Atlas Rises, that I finally decided to pick it up. And oh boy, it was everything I wanted and more.
By the way, in case you were wondering, the thread title is meant for those who have already played through the storyline. They will understand that reference. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
It begins!
First time booting the game you are given 4 difficulty modes to choose from:
- Normal
- Survivor
- Permadeath (just like Survivor but your save is deleted after you die)
- Creative Mode (you never die and crafting doesn't require any materials)
The game lets you have one save of each so you can play on all difficulties at once if you so desire but I decided to play on Normal on my first run. You are spawned in a random planet located on the edge of the galaxy with nothing but a broken ship and a broken gun. You are placed in a planet with some type of hazard environment (mine was really hot). Your exosuit has a shield that protects you from these and also an oxygen life support that goes down whenever you move around, use your jetpack or run.
The first hour of the game you are given instructions about fixing your stuff and how all the different elements in the planet are acquired. I quickly learn that rocks on the ground give me Iron, plants give me Carbon, red spiking rocks give me Plutonium and little seeds growing around the planet give me Thanium9 and Zinc. You can harvest most of them by using your guns' mining beam. The broken tech on my ship and gun required a mix of these to fix them.
Our gun is called multi-tool and, as the title suggests, it can do a variety of things. One of the first techs I fixed was the Scanner which allowed me to scan for plants, materials, and points of interest around the planet. The second tech I fixed was the Analysis Visor which gave me some sort of binoculars that I could use to scan and document animals, plants and rocks. It also gave me useful information about the planet's name and the rare materials I could find in it. Scanning plants and rocks with the Analysis Visor also allows you to see their composition and acquire a secundary element from them. Scanning rocks for instance can let you mine not only Iron but a second material like Alluminum.
Almost everything in the game requires fuel which is replenished by any of the 5 basic elements I described above. All of these are a constant in all planets you go to (except for dead planets which don't grow plants). The ship also has a few useful techs to get it off the ground but I won't get into it here. Once I fixed everything it was time for me to leave that planet behind and finally aim for the stars.
Story
Yes, you read it right. There is a story in this game and one of the most compeling I've seen these past few years. The first time you reach space your ship picks up on a misterious signal on a different planet. Someone, for some reason, left you techs that would later help you make warp jumps to different star systems. At that point the character you are playing is also confused. He doesn't have any memories and doesn't know why he woke up next to a ship and a broken multi-tool on his hands.
I am quickly lead to a series of jumps to new star systems. In the mean time I was taking my time exploring and discovering new planets, creatures and environments. It was not until the 4th jump that my ship picked up on another signal. This time things were different. A message showed up on my screen:
YOU.... ARE NOT... ALONE!
Wow. What the hell was that? I was immediately interested to know where it came from and why it left this message to me. This is the start of the new questline introduced on Atlas Rises. A quest that would take me in a 50h journey of self discovery and lots of mystery regarding the whole nature of the universe we are playing in and the story of all the 3 different races in the game. I won't get into much detail but rest assured: I was left wanting more.
The story basically ends on a sort of cliffhanger that leaves a taste of things to come in a future patch. I started reading the story of the latest ARG that ran before Atlas Rises and it gives a lot of hints of where the story might go next. The fact that Sean is releasing all of this for free is mind blowing and I can't wait to see what new questlines they come up with next.
Gameplay
BUT WHAT DO YOU DO?
Well... turns out: A LOT! There is an overwhelming amount of stuff that you can engage on during your travels. You can explore, be a pirate, a mercenary, a farmer, a trader. Anything you can possibly imagine. The game allows you to make money any way you like. There are three guilds and three races in the game that you can pick up quests for. Each quest you complete increases your standing with each of them and it allows you access to different and better techs you can buy as well as better rewards you can sell for a huge amount of money.
Each race in the game has its own language. At first you have no idea what they are talking about when you engage in a conversation with them. Dialogs are a huge part of the No Man's Sky as picking the right response in conversations might lead you to great rewards, or great disapointments (like worse standing with that race). You can pay each NPC of that race to teach you a new word and you can also find monoliths and abandoned monuments on planets that can also teach you more. There are over 500+ words you can learn for each race.
Learning their language also helps you out during other situations. For instance: I found a manufactoring facility on a planet. The place was sealed so I had to break the front door and get inside while sentinels guarding the place were trying to kill me. Once I got inside an alarm started to play and all the lights started flicking red. There was a terminal in the middle I could interact with. The terminal had something written on it with words I couldn't understand and I was given three choices to choose from. If I chose the right choice the alarms would be deactivated and I would get a new blueprint. If I chose the wrong one the alarm would never fade and more sentinels would come.
You can pick a planet of your liking and make it your home base. I usually hate crafting and building homes in games but No Man's Sky base building is one of the best I've seen. It's really complex yet incredibly intuitive to use. You can build a variety of structures of different shapes and sizes and some of them even serve a porpose.
You are also slowly guided into it through some NPCs questlines while base building. The first thing you do after finding a habitable base is hiring an overseer. He will later give you useful blueprints so you can expand your base even more with other hiring jobs like an arms broker, a technician, among a few others. Wnat is great about it is that each NPC you hire has a personal storyline behind them and you have to help them out before they can fully commit to your base. Some of these stories are incredibly sad too.
Here is a shot of my home base before I strated building it (it was located in a forest moon, so the view was amazing):
Later on you can also craft VEHICLES! YES BABY! Instead of exploring on foot you can build up to three different types of vehicles to drive around into. A truck, a regular "car" and a hoverboard that you can use to fly above water. Each of them can be upgraded with all sorts of different techs like a advanced scanner to find buildings and other points of interest, a mining beam to quicly get the materials you want without leaving the car, among a few others like a nitro boost. The first thing I did after crafting my first vehicle was: explore underwater! (yes, you can do that!)
Later on during the main quest you get introduced to Portals (also a feature that came with Atlas Rises update). Portals allow you to input coordinates and reach new planets and systems that have already been visited by other players. When you go through them you don't bring your ship with you, so all you can do is explore on foot and eventually go back through the portal to your planet of origin.
There are a total of 16 different glyphs you can learn and a 12 digit coordinate you can type them on. Glyphs can be found on gravesites from other traveler NPCs found across the universe. Atlas Rises also introduced the first big step for online coop. Since you can use portals now, you can go to a planet where lots of different players have already visited and you can even find them walking around as floating orbs.
Graphics
Although it might not have the best recent graphics, No Man's Sky has one of the most beautiful art styles I've ever seen. I see myself taking more shots than actually playing most of the time. They added a very rich photo mode which you can tweek to your liking. You can even change the position of the sun and get that cool sunset shot.
Since there are no loading screens when moving from space to planet and vice-versa you can see a lot of popups while flying. But that is the nature of the engine they are using which increases LOD as you move closer and closer to the ground. They apparently optimized that a lot since launch so it's actually pretty good now. Either way you eventually get used to it. And walking on foot is gorgeous. Here are some of the latest shots I've taken from OG PS4:
Conclusion:
There is probably a lot more that I'm forgeting right now but long story short: I'm having a blast with this game and I'm glad I waited this long to pick it up. No Man's Sky is in a near perfect state right now and basically has everything that I wanted when I first saw it's concept. The amazing thing is there is still a lot to look forward to.
It's a rare thing when a failed launch gets turned around like that and I'm amazed about the level of support Hello Games has been giving to the game even after a year. You see how BioWare treated the Mass Effect Andromeda fiasco and you gotta give props to Hello Games.
I hope I got to spike the interest of anyone still on the fence about the game with this LTTP and I hope I managed to make it a good one too. Bonus:
