A week or two back, I read a comment where someone said that if you finish The Purge by refusing Atlas, you can’t unlock the They Who Returned quest (Autophage content). I’ve never heard anyone else say anything about it one way or the other.

Yesterday, I made a test game and confirmed that They Who Returned works just fine after refusing Atlas. Obviously, this is just one data point, and I can’t guarantee that it applies in every single case.

For the record, here’s what I did:

• Started a new game in Creative mode, Switch NMS version 4.4.7 (equivalent to 4.47).
• Chased the Artemis path until after having made the big Artemis decision.
• Did the A Trace of Metal quest. On Switch, this is triggered by warping 25 times, so no settlement is necessary.
• Jumped to a dissonant system, obtained an Echo Locator, and lifted the lockdown on the harmonic camp.
• Returned to the Artemis path and completed it by refusing the Atlas.
• Took off in my ship and warped to a nearby Vy’keen yellow star system.
• A few seconds after arrival in that system, the hijack warnings began.

If anyone cares, that whole process took just under five hours of game time, according to the save file. Wall-clock time, however, might have been twice that.