More than nine years after its divisive launch, it's impossible to downplay the impact No Man's Sky has had on countless gamers and developers. As far as the best space games worth replaying over and over again go, they truly don't get much better. Hello Games' galaxy-altering free content updates are fantastic. That said, the game's biggest strength has become its biggest problem, at least for me.
I'm the sort of player who needs to set everything up perfectly in order to really enjoy a video game that isn't tied to a breakneck review period. That means, among many other things, going into video settings before the fun begins, making sure the controls fit my personal taste as much as possible, and putting together a vanilla-friendly but satisfying package of mods whenever I think of returning to Tamriel. Moreover, I'd like to be all patched-up if the single-player game I'm about to play has been around for years.
No Man's Sky, meanwhile, is the rare sort of single-player-oriented beast (how many people have you actually seen playing online?) that won't stop changing with meaty official updates every few months or so, and I find that extremely triggering. Stop making an amazing video game even better!
Blasting off again
I hated No Man's Sky at launch. I really did. Putting the unfulfilled promises aside, even what actually was in the game was deeply unimpressive and barely made for a coherent gameplay loop. It was, in my humble opinion, little more than a staggeringly ambitious tech demo. One way or another, I'm glad Hello Games stuck with it though. Brief but shiny glimpses of genuine greatness often reached out through its cracks.
The NEXT update brought No Man's Sky closer to what it should've always been, beginning a Cyberpunk-like redemption story for Hello Games and this uniquely aspiring sci-fi exploration and survival game. Each major update which hit core game systems asked players to make new characters and restart their journeys from scratch to get the best possible experience. That's when my 'good problem to have' with NMS started.
Keeping track of every new content update, even when I wasn't actively playing the game, became a tradition. I needed to know whether I'd get the 'complete' and fully fixed-up experience whenever I decided to jump back in. What? New biomes which only spawn consistently if you re-enter a galaxy? New toon. A revamped early-hours (still miserable) experience? Yep, that's me starting all over again. As rewarding and satisfying as it was to see the game become better and grander, this quickly became a recurring annoyance.
A vicious cycle
Here's the thing: I don't blame Hello Games for any of this. The post-launch support has been beyond anyone's most wishful expectations. Well, actually, I blame the studio for the sorry state it originally launched this premium game in, but we're well past that. This loop I'm still stuck in (yes, even as I play the excellent Switch 2 version) is totally a me problem.
I'm not even playing NMS that much anymore. Duty calls, and that means putting in less hours into this type of game than I'd like to. Yet I can't shake the feeling that I'm 'missing something' every time I load this bad boy up after a new sizable patch. I'm trying to resist the temptation to dump my entire save file yet again. I'm trying to be better, as if anyone cares or god-emperor Sean Murray is following my every move. Can I truly break the cycle?
It reminds me of my brother-in-law having played close to 200 hours of Baldur's Gate 3 without finishing a single playthrough at the time of writing: "I have a gimmick for each run, but come up with a better one around Act 3 each time, so I restart," he told me last year, smiling. As far as I can tell, he hasn't changed an ounce of his approach. He seems content with making the most of that RPG his own way, free from any FOMO.
Perhaps that's how I should tackle NMS moving forward. Even if you stick with a single character for tens of hours, it stays an overwhelming experience designed to accommodate all sorts of spacefarer fantasies with no 'true' ending or ultimate status. Maybe roleplaying a certain type of space explorer until I run out of ideas with them is the path forward. It's not exactly Starfield, but applying the loose sense of direction that I adore in Bethesda's gigantic RPGs could be the key to braving No Man's Sky's ever-changing universe.
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