During Singularity expedition, we are tasked with forging the Seed of Will, which is “unsuppressable will to exist” taken physical form. When we interact/Resonate with it, it sounds like typical Atlas Interface… except it suddenly starts to sound like an alarm, very melodic one at that.

Now for those who don’t know, No Man’s Sky universe is essentially a simulation run by Atlas. Atlas is the name of the supercomputer who was designed to run these simulations by some unknown race of beings. However, these beings have fled the world which was slowly being eaten by the black hole and left Atlas behind, probably too monumental in its size to be transported easily. This has caused Atlas to develop abandonment issues, depression and existential dread. According to his calculations, he has 16 of something of operational time left (this is why you see number 16 being repeated everywhere throughout the game). Also fun fact – canonically your character is the last iteration of Traveller beings, which were made out of brainscans of Atlas’ creators. It creates Travellers in an attempt to find out why was he abandoned.

Now this is my theory, that the sound we hear while resonating with the Seed of Will is actually what Atlas hears in its room or other chamber where its physical body resides in. The melodic tunes we hear might be an emergency alarm sound as the physical world is slowly being torn apart by the black hole with Atlas being able to do nothing as he dies. The fact that the Seed of Will is described as “unsuppressable will to exist” could mean that Atlas wants to survive in whatever way it can. This also ties into another theory that the Construct we are assembling is actually body of the Atlas itself, which wants to traverse the simulation rather than just simulating it. I believe that this might be actually the way for Atlas to depart on its own terms – to wander around the world he has created rather than feel his body being torn to shreds in complete solitude.

I’ll start saying i’m in love with this game, the sentinel update is amazing.

I’m a console player, so i’m using a pad on my ps4 and today i had a rough time trying to get a good friend of mine to learn the basics and how to use everything on the game and I noticed (my god) I COMPLETELY IGNORED for a long time how bad the UI design and controls are, first the controls are not meant to be used with a pad, it’s a friggin mouse pointer which makes everything HORRIBLE for a console player, just having to move the stick to use the menus is pain, second, everything gets in your way, the floating info is too god damn big for every item to the point where you have to hide the hud to be able to have a not so horrible experience building your base.

Please Sean I know you’re reading, and thinking this guy doesn’t even know how to write properly

But

Please

PLEASE

I’m in pain

Can we have a proper console controls UI? An UI and controls revamp adapted for Gamepads would be a really nice improvement

Needles to say my friend was very excited to play the game but felt overwhelmed by the bad UI design and the controls.

A bit of a vague title, but the truth nonetheless. I got in to No Man’s Sky somewhat late; a couple of expansions dropped, the tide already turned. No Man’s Sky was seen as a decent game, lots was achieved after launch.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun! The first couple of hours were mesmerizing, and I was excited to see what was to come. Fast forward about 50-60 hours, and I was already kind of done with the game. I was earning millions of units with an Activated Indium farm, something that was recommended to me by the many YouTube ‘guide’ videos surrounding this game. I had reloaded a Freighter battle almost 50 times and achieved a Capital S-Class Freighter. I had a massive farm that I used for nanites. I was maxing out my inventory and I finished building somewhat of a base.

Now what? That was the question I had, and it never really went away. Somehow I felt as if I didn’t really ‘complete’ the game, but I also no longer had a goal to work towards. I was earning an absurd amount of units, with nothing to really spend it on. I no longer had any motivation to engage in the vast majority of the systems the game had laid out, because why would I? The rewards gained from exploration were not worth it, I wouldn’t gain anything from it.

I briefly played on both a hardcore and a permadeath save, but after getting the associated achievements, I realized that the changes these game modes provided were not the changes I was looking for. If anything, they seemed detrimental somehow; on top of not having a goal once I set up a few farms somewhere, I now also had to fight a limited inventory system for naught but a level of tedium. If this was No Man’s Sky but difficult, I realized that I did not desire ‘difficulty’ in this game.

I stopped having fun, so I stopped playing.

Then, some time later, I realized that I messed up. I realized that No Man’s Sky, for all of its faults, is not meant to be min/maxed, at least, not for me. I hopped into the game again, determined to go against what I normally do in games like these. This time, I did not rush any sort of farm for mass units and nanites. I did not hop around systems to find the perfect S-Class Freighter. I did not look up any ship catalogues, or teleporter coordinates for valuable exotics or multi-tools. I even started roleplaying my traveler a little bit.

Man, what a world of difference. Suddenly, I find myself having something to work towards constantly. No longer do I skip over 90% of the content in the game because it’s ‘not valuable enough’. I get excited when I find a cool treasure that’s worth a lot of units, or when I find a crashed freighter somewhere. It’s fun to scour planets and systems alike for valuable targets, resources, and settlements.

This might sound totally obvious to a lot of you, but I can’t begin to tell you the epiphany I had when I started playing the game like this. This is what No Man’s Sky is meant to be. It’s not a space economy simulator, it’s a space exploration game. And though that is apparent everywhere in the game, it somehow took me over a year to realize that.

So to all of you who got bored with the game due to a lack of goals, or because making money/nanites etc. is ‘too easy’, try a different approach. Maybe you shouldn’t go for an Activated Indium farm. Maybe it’s best to delete that generous gift from some player in the Anomaly that’s worth millions upon millions. I’ve learned that when I try to game No Man’s Sky, I simply end up gaming myself out of tens, if not hundreds of hours of fun.

See you Space Cowboys…