Sometimes NMS will give me a small existential crisis, not a huge panic attack or anything, but just a thought that comes and goes every once in a while when I’m playing. The game ha so many world that it would take the player almost 900 billion years to see them all. The game has about 18 quintillion planets after all. This makes me just think for a moment about how small we are and how impossibly have the universe is, and how we will never even leave our system in our lifetimes, and how the chances of this happening to anybody in the future are slim. We will never get to see any of this, we just get to see this tiny rock we live on. But about a minute later, this thought fades away and I continue mining for copper, waving to other players in VR, fighting space pirates, or whatever I was doing before. I appreciate NMS for giving us the chance to see all of this that we otherwise never would have.

TL;DR NMS sometimes gives me a small existential crisis where I am reminded about how big the universe is, how small we are, and how we will never explore any of it.

Now, since this is a discussion, have you ever felt this way while playing?

Every system I go to, I see beautiful starships.

Unique and interesting shuttles, elegant explorers, mean looking fighters, haulers with distinctive wing configurations. I can’t help but want to own them all. I have the collector’s itch.

But my starship roster is full of ships just as beautiful, that I have flown and upgraded, and loved forever. I have no room for newcomers. Not unless I divest myself of some of my beloved space cars.

It hurts. It wounds me, damn it! Why am I so attached to these procedurally generated video game assets? I know it’s insane, but how do I let go? How do I learn to destroy a thing of beauty in order to acquire another? How do I decide which of my children must die? I didn’t expect this game to stress me out this way!

In conclusion, I would like to have no fewer than 100 starship slots. Get on that, HG. 😉