No Man’s Sky is a game straddled by the burden of fan expectations. In the 3 years of development preceding its release, the game was a constant curiosity. Depending on who you ask, you could hear a smorgasbord of what people thought/wished/expected the game to be. “I’m just gonna trade the entire time. I’m gonna be a bounty hunter. I hope you can build bases. I’m gonna head for my friend’s planets and play with them.”
Nobody actually had concrete details about what the game was in practice, just that you could fly in space, head to different planets, and discover some cool things. And for a while, that’s all anybody needed. But years later, we still knew very little about it, mostly because Sony, Hello Games, and founder Sean Murray had kept a tight seal on information. He’d share the occasional video and a vague description of things you can do, but we never got a clear sense of what moment-to-moment No Man’s Sky actually looked like.
Now, in the wake of the first week of No Man’s Sky release, the lack of information has, understandably, led to fans and critics alike being disappointed about what the game truly is. And that’s what we want to talk about today: a guide of sorts that will clearly explain what kind of game No Man’s Sky is, and the best ways to enjoy your time with it.
The first thing to understand, above all else, is that No Man’s Sky is a survival game with crafting. That undersells what else there is to do, but the survival base underpins your entire time with the game. Depending on the planet you find, you’ll often be scrounging for materials and increase your life support, fuel your ship, and allow you to craft better parts for your suit, multi-tool, and starship.
And when you’re not doing that, you’re exploring planets. You might happen upon Monoliths that help you learn alien languages, break into manufacturing facilities that contain new crafting recipes, and a lot more smaller adventures. But that’s where the real fun of No Man’s Sky is: the smaller adventures.
Don’t convince yourself that this is the last video game you’ll ever need. The game has some of the most impressive random generation tech that games have ever seen, but that doesn’t mean it has unlimited interesting content. After your 8th planet or so, you’ll notice a loop to the game that persists throughout. Sure, you’re learning new words, but you’re finding monoliths that look exactly the same as the last one. You’re seeing animal parts you’ve seen in varied mixes elsewhere.
This is true for the entirety of the experience. There is a legitimate novelty and sense of wonder when you happen upon a truly interesting planet full of life and beautiful views, but the part where it’s a video game remain shallow. The goals the game naturally sets up for the player are, for many people, not great and not conducive to a good “story mode” format. There are paths that will lead to deeper narrative realizations, but they remain subtle throughout.
So with this in mind, why is No Man’s Sky a fantastic game?
No Man’s Sky is fantastic because it doesn’t care about having a goal. It’s a game about creating your own goals, and wandering around without any at all. The game is best played when you don’t have any particular task in mind.
We, as players, tend to think of video games only in the context of beginning and ending. We typically start a game and then reach its ending a collection of hours later. And even if we know a game is supposed to be different, it’s hard to fight that comfortable format. But once you realize that No Man’s Sky is a truly open game that doesn’t care what you do in it, your enjoyment may instantly increase.
It’s not often that a game includes mechanics that have no important bearing on the rest of the game, but No Man’s Sky is full of them. You can scan the various plants and animals to your heart’s content, but it won’t get you anything more than a small handful of money. You don’t get anything special from meticulously naming all of your planets after various locations in the Metal Gear franchise (I am my own parody), but you’ll find yourself doing it anyways. Because not everything in games has to be done because it progresses you through the game’s hierarchy. Some things are just fun, and deeply personal.
No Man’s Sky isn’t a game like Uncharted or even GTAV, where you play for a dozen(s) hours over the course of several days and then put it down for a long time. That format makes up 99% of video games, but is completely incompatible with No Man’s Sky. NMS is something that is not only best enjoyed in small, relaxing, therapeutic chunks, but it’s almost essential that it be played this way after a while.
And the best part is that Hello Games knew that it was this type of game from the start. Sure, the game’s crafting system and initial story of fixing your starship gave the player some linearity early on, but all that talk that Sean Murray gave for 3 years regarding No Man’s Sky being about exploration wasn’t off the money. It’s a survival game, sure, but at a certain point you feel like you’ve survived, and now you’re thriving.
Exploration is the new name of the game, even if that game may be played over the course of years. And yes, there are fast tracks for those who desperately want to see the center of the universe, but grinding out the same resource just to jump between systems is not a fun experience.
It’s important that you be aware of what No Man’s Sky is, if you’re still on the fence about it, but it’s even more important to recognize how to enjoy the game. Very few games are comparable to it, and it doesn’t have goals in the traditional sense. No Man’s Sky is the first game we’ve played in which you only ever get what you put into it, and that makes it something very special, in the right mindset.
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