I’d love to say exploring, discovering, combat, or story….. I can’t though… You know what it is? Orientation means SHIT in space! What does EVERY. SINGLE. space movie/show have in common? In space, up is up and down is down. I NMS, when you warp into a galaxy or into space from a planet, ships are all different orientation. It’s such a little thing that makes the biggest difference….. What about you guys? What’s the ONE thing that stands out?

I’ve just started playing the actual story of this game and something about it just makes me… Nervous? Anxious? I’m not sure what the right word is really cause it’s not like it’s in my face all the time.

I’ll be running around playing with animals and scanning plants and naming worlds and then… A fallen freighter with its glowing core ripped out whispers to me of voids. A lonely, barren planet’s horizon is broken only by the pulsing diamond of a stranger’s grave. It tells me stories of the creature in a search for… SOMETHING. Lost audio logs on planets of acid oceans and never ending lightning beg me not to follow, but pray they can be found before they’re lost forever.

My own home, my own settlement I’ve invited in strangers. A Gek overseer who knows me, knows my children was once a comfort. A friendly quest giver unlocking greater pieces of technology and lore I could not on my own. A Korvax scientist bursting with excitement, just coming of age to explore the endless universe ‘alone’. My home and my supply a perfect safe haven for this tiny part of something bigger to grow…

Yet… The very moment I get them settled within my home something changes. Amid the simple tasks of building and gathering there is something… Wrong. Ramblings of the Gek on my destroying of planets thrown in at the end of dialogue. The need for weapons. The command of hunting out Sentinels to gather ingredients from their destroyed parts. Gone is my exuberant Korvax excited for the future. It it’s place something new and wounded. A part of the whole that has been cut off entirely… Because of me. Because it drew too close to a Traveler… it is now being punished through no fault of its own.

I am left to only do as told to progress. Slay the Sentinels for the Gek. Offer what little comfort I am able to, to the Korvax I stunted by providing false hope… Providing them with a paultry replacement of tools speaking with one another. It… Leaves me uncomfortable. I know something is wrong. I know that I do not have grasp of the full picture and… I am reluctant to push forward.

Who else will I harm if I do? Because I have done harm. My ignorance, my blind faith in friendship and kindness lulled me into a sense of safety. I forgot, amid the exotic plants and beautiful animals that I am… Apart. Something that does not belong here. And it leaves me feeling bad. Guilty over the resources I’ve stolen and planets I’ve plundered.

I cannot tell if this game is good, or bad. But what I can tell is that there is much more going on than I first thought. And that is… Worrisome.

On the positive flip-side – I love this game already and I can see myself dumping at least 100-1000+ hours into it. On another positive note I will probably enjoy Starfield equally. On the negative side of the coin, I will probably be incredible frustrated at not having the best of both worlds.

Do you think interior ship design will happen with NMS? Or building your own ships? It feels kinda weird that you can’t chill inside your ships. A void Starfield will fill.

What I wanted some discussion, thoughts and opinions on, if you guys feel like sharing, is the following; Why do you think it’s so hard to make a game which has the best of both w/o too much compromise? A game like that would probably satiate everyone into an everlasting gaming frenzy.

Is that a technical challenge? Economical one? Development time? All of those or others?

I’m playing NMS like a relapsed crack addict who just found a mountain of cocaine atm. And I’m friggin loving the game. And I’ll probably love SF when it comes out. However it does leave this frustrating thought eating at me like… these two games seems to both lean towards everything I want in a game so closely but not perfectly.

Anyway, /endrant! Glad I discovered this game despite being late to the show. Finally a game to fill the massive void.