I have been playing since 2016 when it came out, but the realization didn’t hit me until today. There’s so much beauty in the game. The universe of this game created itself. Every flora, fauna, behavior of living creatures, the terrain, the cave systems, the oceans, the trees, almost everything if not everything, was generated by an engine. Not even the developers know what everything in NMS is. This is nothing new, of course, but with the added fact that there are 255 galaxies and 18 quintillion worlds in this game still puts me in awe. The people who did the math said it would take about 500 billion+ years to explore every galaxy, star system, planet, anomaly, and space station in the game.

You will never explore all of NMS. Your children will never explore all of NMS, nor your great grandchildren, nor your great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren and so on. If the game manages to live on for thousands of years and years to come (it likely won’t but for argument sake let’s say it does), it will likely still not be fully explored and people who find old bases (As it will likely be easier to find old player bases) from these previous and close following years will be as abandoned and relic like as the already implemented ruins we find on planets that we didn’t build. The visuals are insane. Warping into a new start system and seeing the sun (or suns!) with their glow and shine reflecting off the corners of solar system gets me every time. The faint glow of distant stars and the color of your star system are miraculous to see, even if you have been playing this game for about 6 years.

The music is another thing altogether, sometimes it sounds sad, sometimes it sounds fast and action packed, but for the most part there’s a common theme; loneliness and solitude in a vast universe. The music is the perfect mix between sad, ominous, and nostalgic that perfectly makes you realize: “Damn. I’m alone here in this void.” Of course Hello Games implemented ways to see other players and do missions with them, but just the normal feel of the game still makes you feel lonely. It’s great, and 65daysofstatic couldn’t have done a better job.

No Man’s Sky is not just a space exploration game, it’s an infinite feeling mysterious space exploration flight simulator survival economy trading game, with a great soundtrack, a overarching story that gives you an existential crisis, and a redemption story better than Avatar: The last Airbender.