Roughly two weeks ago, I awoke in the middle of a toxic landscape. Insidious storms hurled acidic rain my way as I made my way through this foreign planet I found myself on. Bewildered, my body stumbled over to a crashed ship. Presumably, the wreckage belonged to me - a piece of text along the bottom of my visor seemed to indicate as much. With only the broken down ship and a mining tool left, only one instruction was clear - explore and learn. So that is exactly what I did.
Fast forward to the present and I've found myself in the solar system Nistema. Looking at my star map, I can see that from the point I awoke to now I've traveled millions of light years to get here. I've jumped to roughly ten different systems in that frame of time, each with planets of varying conditions and sizes. Along the way I discovered that I wasn't alone in this vast universe - a notion I had been skeptical of ever since I left my first planet. Three alien species coexist in the vastness of space, and I've even managed to befriend several of them. One even offered me their freighter after helping them deal with some pesky pirates. I still have so many questions I'd like answered concerning my existence, even after learning so much. This is just the start of the story, one that I created myself in the content-rich sandbox game No Man's Sky.
You see, I could go on and on about the tale that's unraveled itself in my head during my 10+ hours spent revisiting Hello Game's No Man's Sky. It's received several post-launch updates that have further expanded upon the game, including new quest lines to follow. That's not what makes the "story" of the game so incredible though. What really contributes to it Is you, the player. Because of No Man's Sky's procedural generation system, no player is going to be telling the same exact story as I just did. You could start the game and find yourself on a paradise planet, a toxic and hostile system teeming with harsh enemies, or on a planet that's been dead and empty for centuries. The possibilities at times feel nearly infinite.
Look, I know that with No Man's Sky latest NEXT update, numerous people out there have gone back to the game to re-review it as a whole. However, I feel like the "narrative" aspect of No Man's Sky deserves more attention, and my feelings on it have been bottled up until this point. While No Man's Sky has two main questlines, the Artemis and Atlas Paths, the framework around them is so broad that no one's quest is going to be quite the same. You don't even have to take on these stories if you choose not to. If you'd rather make it your goal to become an intergalactic entrepreneur with a high-class fleet of ships, you're more than free to do so.
I feel like when No Man's Sky was originally released, it received a lot of flak for the lack of strong and clear narrative focus along with a gameplay loop that wasn't engaging enough for some. This echoes a lot of the same sentiments I've found with another space-oriented game - Bungie's Destiny. When first released, the game was fairly bare bones and lacking in story, to the despair of many Halo fans eager to see what the studio now free from Microsoft's reign would create. Only after several updates and DLC expansions did Destiny finally come into its own and, for the most part, grow into a fully realized vision from its pre-release pitch (its sequel didn't learn from this, but that's another story altogether). What's given No Man's Sky a leg up over Destiny though? In my opinion, it has been its vast and open-ended structure.
As of late, I feel like Hello Game's has done a better job at letting me make my own tale than games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls; two major franchises renowned for their sense of immersion. There's just something about the delicate line that Sean Murray and his team have managed to make between a Minecraft/Ark-like sandbox and a GTA/Skyrim-like open world that deserves to be commended. The only other game that I can recall giving me a similar sensation is one of my favorites from 2017- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Source: Nintendo
There are certainly many sandbox games that allow you to deviate from the central plot to perform miscellaneous tasks (e.g. GTA V, The Witcher 3, etc.). However, No Man's Sky's narrative was never intended to take center stage in the player's time with the game, so there is a heavier emphasis on the gameplay pieces of it like trading, base-building, and mining. This is something Zelda also really focused on, and I think that was the right call for both of them.
Breath of the Wild and No Man's Sky also managed to strike a great balance between giving you a good baseline on what goals you should work towards while populating your progress towards that point with various distractions. This can range from random quests to resource management to even cooking and farming. While games like The Witcher 3 and GTA V feature similar mechanics, they follow a more rigid structure and provide the player with a map that's either completely populated with side content after specific points or is constantly being filled as the player progresses through the map. They also give you a detailed path to your mission objective when you lock on to them. These designs really deter the immersion that a game without one can bring.
Information Overload
As you're traveling in space towards a crashed freighter in No Man's Sky, you might pass by a space-fight or a freighter or a station, but these points only populate your compass for as long as you're in the vicinity of them. They're meant to be organic in your journey toward whatever goal you're trying to reach. YouTuber Mark Brown goes into better detail on the game mechanic of waypoints and mission structures in his Game Maker's Toolkit series, which I implore you to watch if it interests you.
It's been amazing getting to see Hello Games manage to cultivate one of the most unique experiences I've ever had in gaming after launching a product that I thought was good but ultimately stopped short of its potential. No Man's Sky is a prime example of where a loose narrative can sometimes be stronger than one with a clear path, like GTA V (again, another story altogether). While not everything has been perfect, the game has certainly managed to meet its initial hype, and dare I say exceed it. I really can't wait to see what Hello Game's has in store for future content updates, and whatever insane game concept that they come up with next.