No Man’s Sky receives a lot of criticism for lack of a proper story or character arc, being a mundane galaxy simulator with basic gameplay elements and mostly for just feeling incomplete. We discuss how the game is largely misunderstood, and how the lack of guidance is actually a good thing.
Most of the concerns with No Man’s Sky revolve around it not having any sort of main objective apart from heading to the distant glowing center of the universe. However, without spoiling anything, let us tell you that the game does offer some semblance of a story and more importantly, it is not meant to be like any other game which provides clearly marked missions and side objectives. Here, you have a goal in sight and the tools to survive. How you reach the end is up to you.
Most games nowadays have a mission structure, a narrative or quests that are accepted by players from certain NPCs or generated by the game. No Man’s Sky provides no such thing. There are three alien races that we encounter in the game. Talking to these Aliens can lead to some new information about their language or grant a new item or blueprint. Every blueprint or “recipe” you learn is a potential quest. If you want a particular upgrade, you will have to go out and look for the relevant ingredients.
Sadly, the alien races in the game are only found behind a desk or standing at a terminal at various outposts and space ports, never moving or working. Perhaps they are stationed there but where are the rest? Where are the alien civilizations and cities? Where are their home planets? None of these questions are answered by their cryptic dialogue and is one of the genuine concerns we also have with the game.
Another rather major objective of the game is to follow what is called the Atlas path. This is a series of checkpoints that reward players with Atlas Stones, and blueprints for one of the key items in the game called the Atlas Pass. Reaching each of these checkpoints requires your Starship to have a Hyperdrive, which is essential if you want to reach your destination in this lifetime. Without this critical component, players are stuck in the current star system, so this becomes another objective.
Here are some more quick examples of a series of events that can qualify as quests or objectives. Players can look for Gravitino Balls or Albumen Pearls to earn Units, scan and analyze every creature and rocks on a certain planet for the 100% completion reward, craft Antimatter for their Hyperdrive, learn as many Gek words as possible, and more. These are all possible in the game but it might not be immediately obvious and apparent. When and how these objectives are discovered or completed depends entirely on the player.
No Man’s Sky doesn’t have any objectives except for what players make for themselves. It doesn’t hold your hand and spoon-feed you every step of the way. This is one of the things that sets it apart from other games and is also the reason why many people are angry or bored with it. In our opinion, it is a refreshing change or at least a lesson to be learned that video games are not meant to be anything but what they are, without the need to fall into a genre or fulfill certain preconceived criteria. Even with all the glitches and the misunderstandings, Hello Games deserves to be commended for achieving such an ambitious project in the first place.
No Man’s Sky provides a vague objective to players with the complete freedom to either try or achieve it or to completely ignore it. It’s not a narrative or action heavy experience that constantly pushes players along with pop-ups and mission alerts. This is an experience for players who like to explore, immerse and most of all, just enjoy their games at their own pace.
Let us know if you agree and whether No Man’s Sky should be a full priced game. For all your gaming news and updates, keep watching this space.