Hey all! I last played No Man’s Sky when the Next update was fresh. Back then I had a lot of free time to put into the game, but it always felt like it was a game that you could play casually and still have fun.

Nowadays grad school has stolen the majority of my free time, and most of my regular games are so overwhelmingly large it never feels like I can play for an hour or two per day and still have a decent time. That being said, I’m looking for a new main game that’s more compatible with my hell schedule. Is NMS a game that could fit that bill, or should I continue my search? Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!! 💚

I didn’t expect the plot of this game to capture my attention as it did, but it touches upon one of my favourite phylosophical topics. This game is very hard of phylosophy of existentialism and Nietzchean nihilism. It quite literally tackless the idea of death of god. But if Nietzche meant it in metaphorical way, on a sense of how one can find meaning in life where there’s no god, but No Man’s Sky takes a more literal approach. God is quite literally dying and you are faced with the idea of your own mortality and finality of the universe. Also, we find out that Altals is an AI that simulates the world, thus mirroring Nietzschean idea of ‘dead god’. We are not some beings created by a divine master with a plan, we are here just because we happened to be here. But in the case of Travellers, they were actually created by a diety with a plan, but their existance in the end is meaningless in a similiar way, because they’re nothing more than simulations in the mind of a dying machine. Here’s where the idea of Nietzschean ‘overhuman’ and nihilism comes in. The core idea of nihilism is belief in no god and the finality of your existance, it’s directed towards accepting the fact that you won’t be here for an eternity and that you should make peace with nothing that may come after. The ‘overhuman’ of Nietzsche is an individual that is capable of setting their own goals and morals, deciding for themselves what they should do with their life in the face of absense of a higher divine purpose. The main question of phylosophy of overhuman is how can one be happy in the world where there’s no higher purpose and no life after death? How one can fight against existential terror that comes with understanding of you own mortality? Even Atlas faces their own finality and are terrified of it. This is the core idea of No Man’s Sky and it is fascinating!