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No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival game developed and published by Hello Games. It was released worldwide for the Nintendo Switch in October 2022. The game is built around five pillars: exploration, survival, combat, trading and base building. Players are free to perform within the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open world universe, which includes over 18 quintillion planets. Through the game's procedural generation system, planets have their own ecosystems with unique forms of flora and fauna, and various alien species may engage the player in combat or trade within planetary systems. Players advance in the game by mining for resources to power and improve their equipment, buying and selling resources using credits earned by documenting flora and fauna, building planetary bases and expanding space fleets, or otherwise following the game's overarching plot by seeking out the mystery around the entity known as The Atlas.
Gameplay[]
Plot[]
The Traveller (the player character) wakes up on a remote planet with amnesia, and must locate their crashed starship. After finding their starship, its computer guides the Traveller to make the necessary repairs, and to collect the resources needed to fuel a hyperspace jump to another planetary system. En route, the Traveller encounters individual members of three alien species, the Gek, the Korvax and the Vy'keen, that inhabit the galaxy. During their voyage, the Traveller is compelled by an unknown force to reach the centre of the galaxy.
Along the way to the centre, the Traveller is alerted to a presence of a space anomaly in a nearby system. Travelling there, they find a special space station ("space anomaly") where many strange aliens reside. Two of the aliens, Priest Entity Nada and Specialist Polo, have knowledge beyond what other aliens in the galaxy appear to possess, including being able to speak to the Traveller without translation. They tell of a strange being, found at the centre of the galaxy. They are able to guide the Traveller towards meeting it, by directing them to a nearby black hole that can quickly take the Traveller closer to the centre of the galaxy.
As the Traveller continues on their journey, they receives a message from an alien entity named Artemis. Artemis says that they are also a Traveller and wished to meet others of their kind, but got trapped on a sunless world after stepping through a strange, ancient portal. After triangulating Artemis's position and talking with the local alien species, the Traveller discovers that Artemis's location does not exist. After telling Artemis the news, the transmission ends mysteriously and the Traveller learns of yet another Traveller named Apollo.
The Traveller then contacts Apollo, telling him about Artemis's predicament. The Traveller is told to uncover the connection between the portals and the Sentinels, the robotic beings protecting each planet. After a skirmish with the Sentinels, the Traveller passes through a portal and is taken aboard a large, unknown vessel in space, where they come face to face with the cosmic being Nada spoke about, named the Atlas. The Traveller is then sent to an unknown planet where they find the grave of Artemis, revealing Artemis has been dead the entire time. While trying to contact Apollo, the Traveller accidentally contacts a new entity named -null-, who tells the Traveller that Artemis can be saved using a "Mind Arc". After constructing the Mind Arc, the Traveller must choose whether to upload Artemis's soul into a machine aboard the Anomaly or to let them die. Regardless of the choice, the Traveller is directed by a distress beacon to another portal where they learn that the Atlas is dying.
The Traveller becomes aware that they, like Nada and Polo, are different from the other sentient beings in the galaxy, having some sense of the universe's construction and nature. It is revealed that the galaxy itself exists as a computer simulation managed by the Atlas, and the Travellers, or the fourth race, are entities that were created by the Atlas to explore the simulation. It is also revealed how Nada and Polo met, and how they are "errors" that had become self-aware of being in a simulation and isolated themselves in the anomaly to help others.
The Traveller investigates more Interfaces and finds themselves once again in direct communication with the Atlas. The Atlas informs the Traveller that it does not want to die. In order to save itself, it directs the Traveller to continue to explore and collect information all while moving towards the centre, where the entity appears to be. The Atlas judges the Traveller's progress, and grants them the blueprint for a different Atlas Seed if it deems the Traveller worthy. The Traveller must continue on this journey, receiving help from Nada, Polo and Atlas Seeds from other Interfaces.
Ultimately, the Traveller reaches the galaxy's centre, finding yet another Atlas Interface. The Traveller must choose to either restart the simulation, saving The Atlas, or reject the offer.
If the Traveller chooses to reject The Atlas's offer, the main storyline ends and the Traveller is allowed to explore the galaxy as they wish. Otherwise, if the Traveller chooses to restart the simulation, The Atlas resets, upon which it creates a new galaxy, as well as creating a new Traveller entity to restart the exploration. It is then revealed that this has happened many times before, each time shortening the life of The Atlas. The Atlas tries to observe the future, past its death, but sees nothing, besides the hand of its creator on its glass casing. The Traveller is teleported to the new galaxy, effectively restarting the game.
Reception[]
External links[]
- No Man's Sky at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- No Man's Sky at GameFAQs