We played the most controversial AAA release of the year (at least in terms of price) for a long time and at length, and each of us decided to give our own opinion on No Man's Sky.
With No Man’s Sky, I remembered the days of Dendy, such deaf 90s, when I bought a yellow Chinese cartridge in a tent in the Lubyanka and took it home with the money I honestly saved and won with “hundreds” or “candy wrappers”. It was hard to sit on the trolleybus: you spin around like that, then you take out the cartridge, then you remove it, then you fiddle with the sticker on it, which has peeled off a little, smooth it out with your fingers. And, of course, the picture - there was usually crap with hieroglyphs drawn, which had nothing to do with the game. But still, I considered every, even the most subtle detail. He came home from the cold, took off his jacket, threw his shoes into the corner, without undressing, ran to the TV and warmed the cartridge in his hands. After all, everyone knew then that it was impossible to insert it into the prefix from the cold, but you really wanted it right now and quickly. You warm your hands, breathe on him and look forward to playing this very GAME now.
Usually several hours passed, I managed to play enough, and my parents were already sent to bed. The next day at school, the entire notebook was painted with heroes and objects from the game, and there was an anticipation in my head: “Now I’ll come home, the lessons are on the side, the portfolio is on the side, the main thing is to turn it on as soon as possible and plunge headlong into the fairy-tale world.”
I am sitting at work 20 years later and I think: I would rather go home and fly into space. Yes, buggy. Yes, dumb. Yes, sometimes boring. But so nostalgically beautiful. And this is the anticipation of the GAME - I haven’t had it for a very long time ( except for Destiny, ha - Timur's note).
I'm not ready to advise No Man's Sky. Everything they say about the game is true. Monotonous, boring, crashes three times a day, the developers completely lied about the multiplayer, here a bug on a bug and a bug will be chased, and all this has no purpose at all - it's all true. If you have played in or in FTL, and even in the simplest Elite (not Dangerous, but the one from the Amiga), then you have a rough idea of what the meaning of No Man's Sky is.
Mighty random runs everything here. Sometimes you can be lucky, but more often you are not lucky at all. Either you land on a planet with green eblosaurs and purple skies, or you land on a planet with red cockwings and yellow water. The whole game just consists of such small stories.
When you arrive at the base to some creature, you stretch your hand to stroke it, and it releases poisonous gas in response. But you get the “Contact” trophy.
When you have been farming gold for three hours, stuffing all the compartments of the ship to the eyeballs, and six pirate ships are already waiting in orbit. In battle, the shields of the ship, of course, cannot be repaired in any way, because you forgot to farm the titanium.
When you fly into a black hole, which takes thousands of parsecs from the desired target, and then in one of the updates this mechanic was broken, and therefore you didn’t fly anywhere at all.
When you find a cool blaster at a military base, you talk to a local officer, they try to take it away, but you proudly say: “I won’t give it back.” The alien respects your decision because they have a "code of war" and that's it.
A week or two goes by and I already hate this game. Everything in it infuriates: a meaningless grind, monotonous planets, and always not the way you need (you need aluminum, but a planet with gold). And here you realize that Sean Murray and his company Hello Games simply slipped you an indie craft for $60, the red price of which is $20. I've already watched the ending on YouTube (because I'm tired of flying to the center of the galaxy), and I'm bombed. I'm ready to throw the disc out the window, but I still come home and put it back in the console.
“Yes, not a masterpiece, but what a potential!” I convince myself every time.
Let critics put derogatory marks, 6/10, 5/10 - who is less? Let the game on the PC be unplayable in principle, and when it will be fixed is not at all clear. But those 30-35 hours that I played it at the very beginning, gave me back that very piece of childhood, even if it was completely fleeting and quickly forgotten.
Should I buy? No. Waiting for a sale? Yes.
Dmitry Zombak
For me, No Man's Sky was the holy grail of meditation games. When you want to be distracted and not think about the essentials, plunging into the universe invented for you. A game for a real escapist. Some spend time in Minecraft, some go to crush monsters in Destiny, some want to be in the middle of an endless battle in Battlefield. And I really wanted just such a game: fly in space, visit unknown planets in a series of endless warp jumps. This is essentially the embodiment of a boyish dream of space travel, inspired by a rack of science fiction books.
When the game did come out, I ran home with the disc like Usain Bolt. I really wanted to play the wildest. Having launched No Man's Sky, I found myself, like everyone else, on an unknown planet and began my journey. First impressions turned out to be extremely positive: the game really turned out to be what I expected from it, having seen enough streams and videos. You wander around the planet, you meet eblosaurs, you collect resources, you fly on a ship, you communicate with aliens (not understanding what they are talking about), you jump into warp space.
The first acquaintance was overshadowed only by constant crashes and friezes in the game. But I'm not the first time, because I played at the start of all the latest Battlefield. The problem is that No Man's Sky has a rather strange way to save progress. In fact, it can be activated in two ways: at the moment of leaving your own ship and by interacting with transmitters on the planet. Due to the constant crashes of the game, you have to stay close to the ship, as well as constantly land on planets and save progress.
Thus, the game technically imposes restrictions: you cannot move away from the ship and collect some items or admire the local fauna without the risk of losing the progress of the last 10-30 minutes without saving. You can't become a pirate and crush ships of an alien race in space for half an hour in a row, again because of the possibility of losing your progress without saving. Of course, this is very annoying.
Okay, I accepted the inevitable, saved every 5-10 minutes on my own, continued playing.
My inner fears, which I did not want to give free rein to the end, were nevertheless confirmed. The game is really very repetitive. That is, the first twenty planets, ten stations, five Atlas interfaces, one hundred eblosaurs really evoke some vivid emotions, but after the fortieth warp jump, you only think about what resources you need for a cool warp engine or a new upgrade in a suit. Because only with a cool warp drive can you fly to the center of the galaxy in a reasonable time.
At first, the intelligence journal was full of names I invented. In each system, I landed on all the planets, walked there, collected various resources for the future, gave names to the animals I discovered. Now the journal often has five or six systems in a row without visiting any planet. If I landed on the surface of one of them, in my journal they are most often called Gravitino Farm, Rednox Farm or Gold Mine.
We are already the easiest way to make money in No Man's Sky. When I wrote this guide, I could not even imagine that literally in a week the whole game would be reduced to this process. The exosuit is fully upgraded with forty-eight slots, the ship is bought with powerful upgrades and twenty free slots for cargo (there are 31 in total). The purchase of an even newer ship is clearly being postponed, because for 40+ cells they already cost some space money, where to get that - I have no idea.
The center of the galaxy is only 171,000 light-years away. In one jump, I already overcome 700. Sometimes black holes help me, throwing one or two thousand extra light years, along the way breaking one of the important and expensive components of a starship. I grit my teeth and fly. Despite the fact that the ending, they say, will disappoint me terribly. But I still heal.
Actually, it’s worth saying the following: despite deceived expectations, despite the idiotic game design in places, despite technical limitations and outright hack-work, I still continue to play No Man’s Sky. Because, in fact, this is the only game on consoles at the moment that helps to recreate as closely as possible the atmosphere of a lonely interstellar wanderer, which we imagined so well since childhood, having read fantastic books.
Timur Seifelmlyukov
Theme: Far Perihelion: No Man's Sky Highlights
I flew to the planet.
Height, evaluating the brilliance of an illuminated metal ball, is insignificantly decided by the central Jupiter. This can be written as follows: V = 29.8 * sqrt(2/r – 1/a) km/sec, where elongation decides the close argument of perihelion. The parameter, at first glance, crosses out Ganymede. The comet's speed at perihelion rotates the population index.
There were very few resources there. I flew further and after 20 jumps I found the ship I needed.
Undoubtedly, the equation of time solves the rotational mathematical horizon. As shown above, aphelion is inaccessible looking for perihelion, this agreement was concluded at the 2nd international conference "Earth from space - the most effective solutions." Sodium atoms were previously seen close to the center of other comets, but the ion tail selects the equatorial parameter substantially. The magnetic field is parallel.
I tried hard to love the emptiness of the cold space of No Man’s Sky, but any of my attempts to find meaning in the procedural hell that was happening on the screen, Atlas only answered me:
Elongation extinguishes the nadir. In this regard, it should be emphasized that anomalous jet activity is available. Daylight saving time, and this should be emphasized, is Callisto, although for those with telescope eyes, the Andromeda Nebula would appear in the sky as large as a third of the Big Dipper bucket. The zenith hour number oscillates Callisto. As we already know, parallax gives an elliptical terminator.
Sorry, No Man's Sky, I love you like the novels of Herbert and Asimov, but your time has not yet come. You rushed to the stars too early, forgetting about the thorny path to space, and stuck in the earthly swamp of your own problems.
The text is procedurally generated.
Maxim Zaretsky
Hello everyone, dear PG users! Now I would like to tell a story about a rather interesting, from a theoretical point of view, project that was simply unlucky in everything. And, as usual, I'll start with the plot, so to speak, the background ...
I am sure that many of you, like me, got acquainted quite early with such mysterious creations of our Universe as stars, distant planets, galaxies and the infinite grandeur of the dark, cold space. From childhood, we were surrounded by unsolved mysteries in books, films, TV shows, even the news, when we recalled the achievements of famous astronauts.
Well, who among us has not dreamed of sitting at the helm of the X-Wing, or the Millennium Falcon and surf the expanses of one galaxy far, far away, or fly with the Pegasus crew from "Secrets of the Third Planet" on an unforgettable adventure through a bright, full of strange worlds and creatures of the universe?
Spaceships, weightlessness, cool spacesuits, aliens, food in tubes, in the end - all this I wanted no less than to see the birth of a supernova.
And, no matter how all of the above may seem to you just simple memories, for the sake of nostalgia, I mentioned these two projects for a reason. It was from their acquaintance that I began to distinguish over time two directions of stellar themes: light and dark space. The second type is best known to you, because it has a huge amount of the most diverse content: Alien, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Dune, Through the Horizon, Firefly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, the same Star Wars and much more. To games in this category, I would include Mass Effect, as well as all the old and new space sims. They are united by the similarity of outer space with the real one, it is more believable and either partially or completely relies on the theoretical laws of our world. True, despite numerous projects, here the imagination of the authors is limited, reaching the use of the same technologies, images of the same types of aliens, up to the same conflicts, or mysterious artifacts of some ancient races.
A completely different thing is light space, among the few representatives that I have seen, I could single out: The Secret of the Third Planet, Lexx, Treasure Planet, Guardians of the Galaxy, as well as most works in the field of retro fiction, that is, space in the minds of people 50- x, 70s, which, with its madness, gives quite a head start even to the current mastodons of the genre. Take a look at the work of artist Robert McCall, for example!
I will say more that in the science fiction films of the last two decades there is nothing close to as unusual as in his wonderful works!
The bright cosmos is characterized by the amazing creativity of its authors and artists, the brightness of the setting, ignoring the laws of the real cosmos (sometimes it looks more like an endless ocean than a black void of dark matter), where it itself acts as an ordinary decoration. And the video game No man's Sky is undoubtedly its true embodiment in the genre of computer entertainment, which is why it once attracted me.
I'm probably one of the few people who fell in love with No man's Sky in the form of concept art, and not that first promotional presentation, thanks to which this game was snapped up like hot cakes at the start.
After enjoying the colorful, rich art - as if they were drawn by some Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai of the western type, I began to wait for the details of this wonderful project. And the first call was information about the procedural world generator, the number of developers, as well as the extremely ambitious plans of Sean Murray. It all started to smell strange, but I hoped that soon the project would grow into a team of several hundred people, and Sony's budget would make it possible to make an AAA class game, instead of an unsightly indie.
Then came the same presentation, from which everyone rushed to pre-order. But for me it became the second, and this time an alarming bell, because such a level of detail and 18446744073709551616 planets did not fit with each other. “Yes,” I thought then, reflecting on what I saw, “this is how the planet will look like if the developers make it manually. By the way, this would have great potential for modders! If there is an open source at the start of the game, then people will be able to add different goodies to the generator , or build their own worlds, thereby expanding the universe."
It only remained to wait for the generator to work, which I was waiting for the most. And, as you could see from the title, I got a total misunderstanding and disappointment, instead of enjoying traveling to distant planets. It seemed that it was someone's joke, as if Hello Games decided to quickly make money on fools by providing a simulator of ridiculous generators instead of a game.
Since then, I forgot about this game, still hoping in my heart that someday there will be worthy and truly creative people who will be able to embody all the delights of bright space in a similar game. So time went on and on, Hello Games suddenly began to flicker in the news with different, albeit rare updates, until Next appeared. And people squealed with delight, forgave Sean for all the shameless and false promises, elevated the forgotten game to the leaders of the Steam chart in sales and activity. "What happened?" I wondered. "Have they turned the whole game upside down? Have they changed the whole stupid plot? Well, then you can try this game! As they say - trust, but verify."
And here, my friends, we come to the second part of admiration and disappointment, where I will lay out first impressions, pros, cons, as well as possible ways how you could really make the game a really great creation.
In the first version of the game, I never had a chance to play comfortably, limiting myself only to reviews and videos, where terrible graphics were demonstrated in all their ugliness with incredible resource consumption. Yes, years later, when I built a computer specifically for future novelties and Cyberpunk 2077, I hoped that its power would still be enough for the great and voracious generator of the whole universe! And I began my first acquaintance with the in-game campaign - the standard mode.
To be honest, the first hours, impressions and planets were quite interesting. As I mentioned earlier, I am in awe of everything that has to do with the style of retro sci-fi and light space, so I flew around the world and explored it with great delight. Approximately four or six hours))) In the future, tired of the endless and dull grind of resources, which only delayed my passage of the plot, I decided to install a trainer (many thanks to the creators of these great programs, you helped me save 20-30 hours, and maybe all 50 in this playthrough!). I just got tired of charging everything with resources, tired of flying with limited cells and finding stupid ships where the entire hold was filled with damaged technologies. I started with money to buy a normal tool, and then a ship, because I was also tired of watching with envy how all sorts of one-faced aliens arrive at the trading post on their fashionable ships for 20 million units. Honestly, literally every aspect of the game seems to be designed to annoy and infuriate the player! Starting from awkward management and flights, ending with a hundred supposedly story missions, where you are led back and forth, intrigued (quite rarely), and then left with nothing. And here I, perhaps, will begin the long-awaited enumeration of the pros and cons:
- Pros -
* Stylistics- the most important criterion, thanks to which I generally decided to install this unfortunate game. Retro sci-fi and references to old films are seen everywhere, from the design of ships, stations, buildings and ending with a variety of lonely relics of an ancient civilization: obelisks, pillars, spheres and portals made of cold dark blue metal look very cool, especially against the backdrop of blooming planets with grass and fields, or a hot desert.
* Graphic arts landscape and textures. I don’t know if they did this with Next, or even earlier, but now it’s very pleasant to walk around the planets (especially with excess flora).
* Adventure. With the inclusion of the trainer, I really felt like a hero of the Mystery of the Third Planet, discovering and exploring various worlds for my own pleasure.
* Sometimes, but quite rarely a generator can really surprise. This began around the end of the storyline, where unusual grass planets, interesting structures and animals began to come across frequently. I especially remember the moment when, in search of Artemis, I entered the portal and for a few seconds found myself on a metal planet, where all the earth and all plants were made of hexagonal plates.
* Sounds and music. It is worth separately highlighting steps on different surfaces, breaking objects into resources, howling wind, rain, etc. A very useful aspect of the game.
* Animals nice to feed, and sometimes it is curious to watch them.
* Weather conditions, such as rain, snow, storms.
* Base building in the same retro fantasy style, where you can always return from a long trip.
* And also inPossibility to build underwater.
* teleports between systems, planets, bases on stations, thanks to which you can avoid terribly long flights / downloads.
* Funny reference to Death Stranding at Atlas station, when three black figures of the main races hang in the form of a cross on a white background.
* Photo mode. What can not be taken away from the game is the beautiful views on the surface. Sometimes, leaving the ship (and I had it vaguely similar to a smaller and more angular version of the Firefly), I simply could not pass by and not take a photo against its background. Night, snowstorm, stars, planets and moons on the horizon, the sound of a cooling engine, a cold, alien obelisk nearby, and I am a lonely wanderer in the middle of a distant world...
Well... that's probably all. And now let's quickly go over the cons, of which there is a whole car.
- Minuses -
* Silly plot, which stretches endlessly through a series of boring missions, each of which is almost always either on another planet or in another system (grind-grind-grind). The result is the realization that the universe is constructed virtually (also to me, Captain obvious, such a world is clearly made by some narrow-minded programmers, and not by a higher power). And also the beginning of the story in a new circle.
* asteroids literally on every inch of outer space. The developers could not come up with anything better than to add clusters of asteroids in the path of an astonished player for the sake of fuel.
* Player bullying. As I wrote, literally everything.
* Too bright, eye-catching effects during impulse acceleration and hyperdrive. Also, the most disgusting glare when you accidentally look at the lamps - as if someone began to cook metal right in front of your face.
* Terrible clouds and sky. Quite a funny effect: when I look at the ground - I have normal vision, when I look up - it's like returning to the time when I suffered from minus six myopia.
* Generator errors. Sometimes it comes to the point that before entering the atmosphere, the planet suddenly loses its landscape and leaves instead water expanses from Interstellar and ridiculous perfectly round islands, otherwise huge stones just float in the air, or are generated like an absurd dome. Two years... the guys tried hard. Winter planets are especially affected in this regard.
* Uniformity of the worlds. In fact, there is one beautiful planet for 10-15 planets, and even then it is mostly grassy. And you already predict the patterns of the worlds after the second system, which is no longer impressive.
* Systems always have the same station with equally spaced aliens in the same places. In fact, after 2-3 stations you can navigate them blindly.
* Periodic recurrence of events- two systems flew by, in the next one a fleet will appear in front of you. Visited two planets, on the way to the third you will be attacked by pirates. You land on a trading post (always empty), immediately ships start arriving and departing at regular intervals. You walk around the planet - every three minutes three identical ships fly overhead. Very infuriating, as if someone constantly rewinds the cassette to the same place.
* Lack of elemental map on the surface of the planet, the inability to use the visor in the cockpit of the ship. But it is likely that I simply did not find an upgrade to the card in the store, if any))
* Guardians- fierce and extremely annoying subjects (and the only opponents on the surfaces). Especially hostile guardians, killing which you meet other stronger ones. And if you fly out of the planet, fighter squadrons will constantly fly in after you.
* Hyperdrive does not work during an attack. Well, I don’t even want to write anything about this stupidity, it’s a pity the trainer couldn’t turn off this nonsense.
* Extremely limited building in normal modes. For every little thing you need to open a drawing, in order to get a drawing you need to find modules. In general, you can only build in creative mode, since there is already a complete expanse for the player. It's a pity, because according to the "plot" at one fine moment it will be necessary to build an entire base and rush around the world, performing boring tasks of your assistants.
* Deliberate time stretching- literally everything that is in the game intentionally wastes your time, while hardly paying off in value.
* Unfinished and somewhat monotonous character customization. It has no logic, and also contradicts the first concepts of the game. And yes, here I want to talk about the ability to use three main races in story modes, which makes learning languages ... completely useless (by the same logic). That is, we can make the hero a Korvax, but he still has to learn the words of his race. We could have left only the wanderers and those guys in spacesuits from the first cell. It also upsets that there are no people whose pilots were depicted on all the first art.
* Futility in search of words. Perhaps only I was unlucky with this, but that at the very beginning, that at the end of the game, only two words appeared in the dialogues of all three races, like the "violator" of the Wai'kins. I opened a hundred different words, but in the same type of dialogues they they don't appear anyway (time dilation, thanks to Sean Murray) Does it mean that you have to open the entire explanatory dictionary in order to see the translation of typical phrases?
* Crooked control of the spaceship and SUV.
* SUVs, being a technique, like ships, they have only three models, and also appear in one player (this is an obvious solution - give off-road vehicles of different types to aliens and let them drive around on the surface).
* Grind-grind-grind.
* broken ships, in which 90% of the cells are filled with broken technologies. And in order to fix these things, it takes an insanely long time to collect tons of resources. What for? For what? Who came up with it? So, thanks, Sean.
* poor animal world, their voice acting, as well as distribution on different types of planets. In winter, in deserts, on poisonous, radioactive planets - the same creatures are everywhere.
* With the advent of construction the developers did not think of adding all this to the generator in order to diversify the same type of stations and outlets.
* The same interesting things while in equal quantities on each planet. As soon as you land at any point on the earth's surface, within 500-1000 meters (in the game this is something u, or u "s), modules, abandoned buildings, word posts, boxes, buried technologies and other garbage appear.
* All quests - give, bring / fly in, turn on.
* Items are inconvenient to create, everything is done one by one (probably forgot to buy an upgrade again). As a result, it is easier to buy them in the store.
* If there are not enough cells in a gun, or a ship, technology cannot be saved in any way, but only disassembled - it is the future, everything is disposable.
* Intriguing plot points break and end with nothing. These were the only episodes for which I did not abandon the plot. Do you want to save Artemis? Complete 30 dull quests and then find her dead. They didn’t even give her race to customization, why the hell is the sixth cell empty there, but Sean?
* Collection of Atlas interfaces. Visit ten systems, climb into the station, get the recipe for 10 balls and... pay attention, 9 is a very unexpected surprise! To collect a blue resource, you need to visit the blue system, and to visit the blue system, you need an upgrade that I have not come across in stock for a long time!
* Amazingly long downloads and flights between planets (again, a waste of time). I bitterly regretted not putting this game on an SSD, but who would have thought that it was so resource-intensive? Moreover, the worlds are still loaded at the entrance to the atmosphere, so why load there?
* Game ending.
* There are no living creatures under water. Completely empty bottom with the same corals on any planet.
* On ice worlds water the same as for all the others. Frozen lakes, icebergs, ice crunching underfoot? No, we have not heard of these nonsense.
* Long and tedious mining of new slots for inventory. In normal games, such upgrades are made for money. And here you have to buy modules, then turn them on to the satellite, fly to a futuristic booth and get a cell by crafting.
* MMO rpg elements, when the required character, after turning in the quest, is 1 hour 59 minutes waiting, or when some resources in the purifier require an hour of real time.
* No man's Sky- a surprisingly irrational time waster, where even with a trainer, hours go nowhere. I don't understand how people play grind plot.
* Being a game where the ship is the second most important protagonist, they didn’t come up with too many interesting features for him: you can’t customize him, paint him. Simple animation (I wish my eyes didn't see it in third person), uninformative scanner.
* Interior all two types of stations are exactly the same. Even those who belong to the three main races. It can be seen that they were built by local Reapers, and the aliens simply occupied them.
* Two years have passed, but no really important changes have been made: new places of interest on the planets; cities, or at least some settlements; new and large ships, like trucks, like the Firefly or the Millennium Falcon (and how cool it would be during a tiring flight to walk on it, clean up some resources, or sort inventory ...)
It was not in vain that I singled out the last minus in full, because I would like to dwell on the planets in more detail. Even though they are a key feature of the game, they are not all that exciting to explore; As an excellent example of such a planet, I would like to recall a wonderful cartoon called "Oban Star-Racers", where the planets Aluas and Oban were shown in all their glory.
I would give all 18 quintillion planets of No man's Sky to visit only Oban. It is this diversity that the developers of large worlds should strive for! And the guys from Hello Games could do it easily - they just had to add some monthly to the generator - some interesting place, ruins and the like, so that with each update, players will find on the planets more and more reasons to stay on them longer.But in the end, even after two years, their planets have the same mountains, the same caves, the same ground level (yes, it is impossible to get to the core of the planet with the help of a terraformer, only ten meters down), the same obelisks, spheres and portals...
Ideally they should have written a different story and made it completely linear, not in an open world. Of course, all players would visit the same planets, but they would be made by hand, as in that first presentation.
They should have been constantly adding new elements to the generator, using existing ones from add-ons to give their abilities to alien races.
They should have - since their staff is so small and most are still drinking cocktails in Hawaii at the expense of game sales - let modders make new content themselves and add it to the generator, just like people with Bethesda games do!
And they should at least once, at least for a moment, turn into those very little children who once dreamed of becoming astronauts and ask themselves: what could I do to make it interesting for me in this world? Why would I myself stay on this or that planet?
Is a long grind of resources brazenly stealing the time of the players - is this exactly what they dreamed of as a child? Is this how they see their universe? If yes, then this game is the same doomed project as it was two years ago. Whether Next came out or not, whether the rave reviews are written by players who used to pour sewage on the same developers - it does not matter. I still see in the current No man's Sky an ambitious project that is not given enough attention and that the creators themselves do not like; A great idea that was unlucky to be in the right hands. Not in the hands of dreamers, travelers, but in cold little hands 40-50 - year old men who work without creativity, just for the sake of a salary.
It’s even scary to imagine how amazing this game was, if it had those 180 million dollars and a team of several hundred people that Star Citizen, an example of dark space, is content with ... In any case, No man's Sky, as a rare representative of a game in light space for me is no longer of such zealous interest as before. And this time all my hopes go to Beyond Good & Evil 2. Perhaps it will be she who will be able to embody everything that I dreamed of seeing in No man's Sky; Wanting to find your Oban there, but never finding it, even after flying through a hundred galaxies...
Thank you all for your attention!
Released in August 2016, No Man's Sky is a space sandbox game where players can do just about anything they want: destroy planets, piracy, trade with alien races, explore ancient ruins, explore other worlds, and more. - much more. However, this does not mean that this game does not have a global goal - it does exist and consists in reaching the center of the galaxy.
This amazing place holds a certain secret that the developers have prepared for the players, so it is not surprising that many users are trying to find out how to quickly get to the center of the galaxy in No Man's Sky. In this guide, we will describe several ways that will help you get into the central part of the universe and see what is hidden in it.
The Most Efficient Ways to Get to the Center of the Galaxy
Look for space anomalies (Space Anomaly)
Already at an early stage of the game, you will, from time to time, encounter special space anomalies that look like small stations from the outside. They appear randomly in the galaxy, so it is not known when and where exactly they will appear.
Once in this anomaly, the player will meet an alien who will show 3 paths: one of them leads to the center of the galaxy, the other to the Atlas, and the third will open access to a particular study.
Those who want to move towards the center should choose the first track. After that, information about a nearby black hole leading to the desired location will appear on your computer.
Pump hyperdrive (Hyperdrive)
After marking a black hole, it is worth focusing all your attention on improving the hyperdriver, so that you can make a warp jump immediately for 300 light years, and not just 100. Another upgrade can increase the capabilities of the warp, but it is no longer necessary.
After improving the engine, we head to the black hole to make a powerful jump. In one such approach, you can immediately overcome 2000 light years, that is, you can noticeably move towards the center of the galaxy.
Once you exit the black hole, start looking for the nearby Atlas Station to power up the hyperdrive. Then we fly to the next black hole. In this way, you can quickly reach the central part of the galaxy and find out what the developers have hidden in it.
Note that in the original version of the game, it was necessary to fly about 40,000 light years to get to the center. With the release of update 1.03 for No Man's Sky, this distance has been increased to 175,000 light years, so get ready for long flights.
"Go, there are other worlds besides these."
Stephen King. The Dark Tower
After many hours of meticulous exploration of the universe, I have finally traveled to the center of the galaxy and uncovered all its secrets. The ending turned out to be so incomprehensible that I wouldn't be surprised if, after some time, it stirs up the gaming community and generates a lot of discussion. In this material, I will touch on all the spoiler moments, starting with the origins of the mysterious Atlas, the mysterious roles of Nada and Polo, as well as the theory about the universe as a product of a computer simulation of a certain super-race, which it actively exploits.
If plot twists and turns are dear to you, and you would like to thoroughly study everything yourself - this material is not for you. But if you were never going to spend 30+ hours on the passage, but you are interested to know how it all ended and what is the cultural and scientific influence of society on this game - stay tuned!
Meaning of the Way Atlas
The story begins when the player chooses to follow the Path of the Atlas, which one day leads them to a diamond-shaped structure floating in space. According to the creator of the game, Sean Murray, it is something like "the central computer system in which all data is stored". In it, in front of the Wanderer (this is one of the names used in relation to the main character - I will refer to him later in the text) appears a giant continuously pulsating ball. This sphere, "remains of Atlas", offers "true understanding of all things". The Stranger immediately asks himself the question whether this is true or not. "some vast simulation created by another intelligence". Here, the player is faced with a choice: to agree to a seemingly dubious offer, or to go his own lonely way. If you agree, then your path to the center of the galaxy has begun.
Despite the fact that the Path of the Atlas is laid out for you in a rather narrow (in relation to the scale of the game universe) "path" leading to other spheres, from time to time you will be able to get into space anomalies and meet the Entity-Priest Nada and the Polo Specialist there. Both of these intelligent creatures have overcome the language barriers that separate the creatures that inhabit the universe. With each new visit, Nada offers the player all possible assistance - replenishes some of the resources necessary for hyper-jumps, paves the shortest path to the black hole on the map (traveling through them brings the main character closer to the goal), or gives advice on how to get to the next "remains of the Atlas" .
In the end, in order to be able to reach the center of the galaxy, you will have to collect and then donate 10 Atlas Stones issued by Orbs. But instead of learning all the secrets of the universe there, you actually start all over again - the mysteries of the origin of the Atlas remain unsolved, and the main character regains consciousness on a planet abandoned by the gods, discovering that his ship and equipment are in critical condition. Instead of ending, it begins anew - in the truest sense - sending the player on a new journey. Let's try to figure out why.
What is an Atlas?
To unravel the thick tangle of mysteries that leads us to an ambiguous ending with Ariadne's thread, we must first understand what Atlas is. In the later stages of the game, the Wanderer refers to the creators of his world as "to weary minds enslaved by their own reality just as I am enslaved by this one". Thus, he already recognizes for them the authorship of the "model", which is the universe. It only remains unclear: was Atlas directly the creator, or was he himself created by a higher intellect?
At the beginning of the game, he leads the Stranger to one of the alien monoliths scattered across the planets in great numbers. After agreeing to cooperate with Atlas, the protagonist observes "lines of code, lines of numbers, then an outlandish connection between them". This is the first hint of the true nature of the universe, which I will discuss in more detail later.
Universe as virtual reality
This year, a significant number of prominent scientists have united around the simulation universe theory. It is based on the assumption that our entire universe is the result of a computer simulation program created by a more advanced civilization. This means that we are all not really rational beings with free will, but just lines of code that merge into its total mass, which embodies the world around us. This idea was supported by the famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (he may be familiar to you from an equally popular meme), as well as the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk. The latter even stated that the probability of the opposite phenomenon is one in billions.
And if you take into account Musk's other comments about the simulation universe theory, its relevance to becomes obvious. During the Code Conference earlier this year, Elon cited video games as an example to explain why he believes the theory is true. He explained that if you trace the trajectory of video games from the earliest to the present, you can see a huge leap in the quality of the technologies used. Musk also noted that if this trend continues, then in 10,000 years, video games will become indistinguishable from reality.
The young billionaire was inspired by the ideas of the Swedish philosopher and Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom, who in 2003 first presented the simulation universe hypothesis to the scientific world. According to him, sometime in the distant future, "superhumans" will definitely begin to conduct so-called "simulations of the life of ancestors." The proof of this hypothesis lies in the assertion that we, too, will one day be able to create simulacrum universes. Let me remind you that in our previous article about we already called these games the first to reliably display the world around us in its entirety.
Despite the fact that Bostrom ultimately abandoned his own theory, admitting its failure due to the lack of obvious evidence in its favor, it remains popular enough at least to find itself in a recently released game. During one of the meetings with the "remains of Atlas", the Stranger reports: “I'm afraid I've seen too much. The code that permeates the Universe is half-forgotten visions to me. An artificial existence governed by single, cumulative algorithms. A program as infinite as being itself. I lift the veil over reality, and what I see terrifies me.
Another clear hint that the universe is not as real as it seems to its inhabitants. This is just an illusion, and the Traveler follows the Path of the Atlas to destroy it. And the most interesting fact is that we, as gamers, already know that it exists only as a virtual reality. In fact, we have already become "super-humans" who gave life to this universe and the Wanderer traveling through it. But who then is the Stranger?
Artificial intelligence
As the end of the journey approaches, the protagonist finally comes to understand his place in the world. He says: “I have become a machine, I am the observed and the observer. The universe was created for my travels. It is built around my Path.”
The word "machine" in this case refers rather to an android, a humanoid being whose actions seem to be free, but are actually controlled from the outside. In the case of the Traveler, the player assumes the role of this outside force, though the Traveler is unaware of this until later encounters with Atlas. In this, he differs significantly from other inhabitants of the universe - at least he is predestined to learn about his destiny.
But why does the player control the Wanderer at all? Well, he himself gives the answer to this question with the phrase about "observer" and "observed". His role in this universe is to be the conduit for the player's experience of it. However, gradually following the Path of the Atlas, he receives more and more frightening information about himself, his neighbors in life and the sad truth behind the beautiful picture.
In this case, one cannot help but note the contradiction: why does this computer program allow one of its “wards” to become aware of itself?
Nada and Polo
At certain points in the game, the only way to continue the Path of the Atlas is to get into the space anomaly to the Entity Priest Nada and the Polo Specialist. As the name implies, this anomaly should not initially exist in the universe at all. This idea is confirmed by Nada at the second meeting with the Wanderer with the following phrase: Simulation Maker, friend or foe? Necessary paranoia. Galaxy, cause and effect, individuality statistical anomaly - Nada error. Do you believe Nada? Believe you?
Thus, Nada confirms that the world around is nothing more than an illusion. He calls himself an error in the code, explaining the existence of the galaxy by a causal relationship, and any manifestation of individuality - an error in statistics. If the universe is indeed a computer simulation, then Nada and his companion Polo, fluent in the Wanderer's native language, are both bugs in her code. In the same dialogue thread, the Wanderer makes a remark regarding Nad's words: “His reasoning is getting more and more convincing”. He adds: “They didn’t find a place in the galaxy for free will or anything that wasn’t limited by straight line cause and effect. They are concerned that we are all pawns in the games of the higher mind that created us - puppets dancing on strings. And Nada suspects me. I am distorted. Am I a puppeteer too?”
From the conversations of the Wanderer and Nad, it becomes clear that the Entity-priest gradually learns more and more about the true essence of the universe - he is even able to manipulate its source code, causing space-time distortions (black holes). Nada becomes the supreme being in the simulation, but grows increasingly suspicious of the Traveler as their relationship develops. In turn, Korvas, the native race of Nad, is increasingly hostile to him, explaining this by the desire to destroy the Entity, which has self-awareness.
Despite the growing anxiety between the Traveler and Nada, the latter still helps the former on the Atlas' Path to the center of the galaxy. Well, does this mean that Atlas does not set out to achieve self-awareness by the Traveler at all, and these are just the unfortunate consequences of his communication with Nada, a mistake in the code?
center of everything
After the player has made enough hyperjumps, collected 10 Atlas Stones, and reached the final station, they are finally given the opportunity to travel to the center of everything. At the same time, the Stranger says: “A new star was born on the outskirts of the Galaxy. The new wanderer will find himself there. I am exempt. I can clearly see the fabric of space, this whole simulation, and the black holes in it. Perhaps I will find answers there.
The Wanderer's words become prophetic, because as a result of traveling to the center of the Galaxy, the player again finds himself on an abandoned planet near the crash site of his ship. So what does this mean?
At first I thought, based on the Stranger's comments about "new traveler" that I was placed in the essence of a completely new character at a time when the previous main character was dissolved in the algorithms of the universe. This theory almost immediately exhausted itself when I got acquainted with the inventory and realized that I had kept the same exosuit, spaceship and acquired goods. Everything led to the fact that I continue the game all for the same Wanderer. The apogee of understanding shortly before this was the inscription in the center of the screen: "New Galaxy Discovered..."
What gave rise to my last theory: the expansion of the universe depends only on the Traveler heading into more and more new galaxies, and each of them is created for the sole purpose of getting impressions for the player. This means that the protagonist's belief in his own free will has no underlying reason, and his destiny is not a journey to the center of the world to the secrets lurking there, but an increase in our ability to explore the game. As in other video games, the Wanderer is just a tool to achieve certain goals.
Our whole life is a game?
Thus, it appears as a computer simulation of the universe, whose plot is centered around psychological trauma from the realization of the unreality of the surrounding world. In my opinion, Hello Games created a project that directly showed what it is like to create a procedurally generated reality and populate it with characters who gradually come to understand that they are nothing more than artificial intelligence.
Nada describes the Wanderer "distortion", hinting that he was given the power to pull the universe by the strings of the code. This is partly true. The wanderer is both cause and effect, he knows what is important to this world and that it was built for him. His mistake lies in thinking that a journey to the center of the galaxy will provide answers to all his questions. But in fact, it turns out to be only a tool for creating new game content.
Tragic, isn't it? The Stranger believed that he would reveal all the secrets and gain the highest knowledge about the structure of the world and his own destiny. And the end of a long journey brings him to a new beginning. He sincerely believed that he could overcome the limits of the universe and get rid of the limitations, but his real destiny is to forever repeat the same predetermined cycle.
This is a game about the consequences of realizing that you are not a player in it, but a weak-willed character. And according to Elon Musk, each of us has yet to experience this in our own skin.
