After immersing myself in the universe of No Man’s Sky for ~500 hours (and still playing everyday), in the past few weeks I also decided to dive into other games of the same genre, namely Starfield, Elite Dangerous, and Star Citizen; only to come to a conclusion that No Man’s Sky is on a whole level of its own.

The quintessential distinction? Realism – or rather, the lack thereof. Unlike its counterparts, No Man’s Sky liberates itself from the shackles of realism. It’s an experience that transcends mere gameplay mechanics; it’s a sensation that permeates the very essence of exploration. I call it “the magic feeling”.

I’ll give you an example: on my very first few hours of gameplay, I discovered an animal that was an amalgamation of eyeballs inside a jelly-like ball. I remember thinking “this is a bit dumb and lazy, no way a creature like that would ever exist” but ironically it kept me intrigued to the point where I adopted it. This creature, far from adhering to the constraints of reality, opened up a whole new precedent: that ANYTHING could exist in this game, because bio-realism was not a factor. And that is where the “magic feeling” kicked. Each encounter after sparked wonder, which wasn’t a thing in the other titles. It’s this departure from the norm, this embrace of the surreal and odd, that infuses No Man’s Sky with an unparalleled sense of magic.

However, in the most ironic twist ever, the game’s biggest strength is also its major flaw: without the prospect of realism bounding us, there’s a very limited amount of creatures and biomes! After 100h you start to feel you’ve seen it all, which is insane to think about when there’s procedural generation into play. Let’s compare it with Pokémon for instance, which has around 1000 different species while No Man’s Sky only has apparently 35. Of course from those 35 you then have thousands of different animals, but they’re all a mix-n-match of parts.

But to circle back to my initial point: even with biomes, despite a limited amount, there’s a magical feeling that comes with the design style. An hexagon planet? Wow (the first time you see it). Fiery planets with mushroom-shaped trees in the style of volcanos? Genius. And so forth.

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I think they could have sunset NMS development like 2 years ago and it still would be considered a damn good open world universe exploration game.

And think of what it means to the devs from beginning to end. It went from something lame and not very substantial, a shallow experience, to something far deeper and far vaster than anyone (even the developers themselves) could’ve imagined.

Obviously there are still a few grating issues with the game (we need an Origins 2 update, seriously, planet and creature variety would help a lot, I’m tired of seeing the same deers and teddy bears and tigers on every planet) but I think that if NMS free update support were to ever end, it would’ve happened a year or so ago.

And of course you can make the argument “Bro wtf are you saying, it’s a company, they make choices based on their wallets not their hearts” and yeah, for most companies I think that’s true but HG is different because of the intense emotional journey most of them have gone through regarding the creation, development, and ongoing support of NMS from its dumpster fire beginning to its current celebrated engoodening.

Another notion to consider: No Man’s Sky doesn’t have super massive content updates. You can just read a patch note one day and see that they implemented a new storyline where you can create and adopt your own little Sentinel buddy and also rework your Minotaur mech. Like sure, from a coding/programming/dev standpoint it IS complex, I’m not denying that, but it’s not nearly as involved as a whole expansion. My point is that Hello Games deliberately keeps their scope low when it comes to expanding on No Man’s Sky, and because of that, in addition to the passion that most of them probably feel for the game, I highly doubt that long-term support for NMS will end any time soon.

But I can be wrong, I’ve certainly been wrong before. However, even if NMS free update support DOES end, it’s going to end on an incredibly high note. They’re not going to just drop it. They’ll drop a banger of a final update that will keep us sated for years. I don’t think they’ll let it go without a “cherry on top”, so to speak.

I find myself a little aimless playing thesedays with all quests finished and after getting all the units and upgrades I wanted. I’m wondering how you guys are playing the game and where you are finding the most fun. Are you working on building a specific base idea? Collecting quicksilver or nanites? Beating up sentinels? Exploring new systems for paradise planets?

I’ve been mostly looking for paradise planets that look nice from space and on the ground itself, and with no night cycle. Using the freighter and just constantly warping and using the freighter’s planet scanner to check the planets. It does get old after awhile, though.