TL;DR I have a crippling fear of death and the unknown, but after being contempt with what I did in my playthrough, I let my life support run out and walked around my base until I died my one and only death.
For preface, I’ve always had an extreme fear of death. I fear that because there’s so much in the world to do and see that I’ll miss so much by the time I die, and have been fixated on preserving my life as much as possible while spiraling into existential crises.
I have a tendency to put myself in the shoes of my RPG-style characters, so naturally I acted as if I were my traveler. I made the decisions I would make, both in the story and in my day-to-day exploration. I got really into it because I didn’t die my entire playthrough- so even on normal difficulty, I treated it as if this was permadeath.
Going through the story, you get so much discourse about someone’s purpose and motivations for even existing, The conversations with Atlas specifically. I got so much into the roleplaying, that I couldn’t bring myself to reset the galaxy when prompted-so the only way to progress was to get to the center. I just kept farming and going about my explorations and slowly crept towards the center of the galaxy, doing things in the game I’d always wanted to do like fight off level 5 sentinels in a dogfight.
After I made it, I immediately went back to my base and decided my will had been fulfilled. I had a great playthrough and a great life as a traveler, and I was okay ending things here, so I literally did.
I swam around and burned through my life support on purpose, then sat on the edge watching the horizon with my [REDACTED] planet pet, waiting for my time to come. (pics below) It felt really alleviating, like weight was being taken off my shoulders. However, being in the emote pose wasn’t getting me killed in normal mode, so I started walking around my base for one last time, and even said bye to my Specialists as well. A superheated rainstorm came by, so I let that finish me off while looking at my ship. After the death quote, I alt+f4’d before it went away.
I can’t say I no longer fear death, but I genuinely believe this game taught me that your life is what you make it. I know a lot of hardcore players would scream about the all the other galaxies to visit and that I had to collect one of each ship type and max out everything, but scouring the Euclid galaxy with my trusty B-class T3 Fighter was enough to make me feel happy with the time I put into this game.
I hope what you all get from No Man’s Sky makes you contempt and happy as well.
https://preview.redd.it/hy5o8x0108671.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=469f3e8cc27c933be06d5e198916b13e4ce5bc0d
Yes he is named after Jimmy Neutron’s dog
