“I don’t want to live on Robot World”
Trying to find the fun in NO MAN’S SKY
Hello Games’ epic always looks so amazingly magical from afar. I see my friends’ screenshots of glorious alien vistas, and I want to find some of my own. I see the latest updates, introducing all sorts of new wonders to discover, and I long to see it all for myself. But every time I try, the game seems ever more unwelcome to me.
I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten out of what amounts to the extended tutorial. It seems to get longer and more convoluted with each update— and, somehow, the exciting new features always ruin my fun.
The last time I tried was after the full multiplayer update was introduced. While I was grinding through the opening stages, trying to scrape together enough resources to move on, a bunch of other players jacked my stuff and left me destitute.
This time I’m at the mercy of the new Origins update, which has added more weirdness and variety. Perhaps too much. My starting planet is a bizarre mech world that I can’t make head nor tail of. There are floating metal balls everywhere—my scanner says they’re plants, which is hard to believe—and instead of rocks and minerals, there’s just loads of scrap. Even the ‘animals’—abstract balls of light—are inscrutable. It’s novel, but not a welcoming place to get stuck.
BALLS TO THIS
And stuck I seem to be, because the game wants me to stay here until I’ve learned the secrets of crafting, upgrading, building a base, and who knows what else. I spend hours wandering its lifeless surface, hunting down grey hunks of metal. It feels like I’ve been banished here as some kind of punishment.
I reach my breaking point when I’m asked to find alien artifacts beneath the surface of the planet.
The problem is, this world doesn’t seem to have any. I trek for miles in search of them before eventually deciding to give up for the night. It’s at this point I realize I can only save by returning to my ship—which takes 20 minutes of real-time walking back through the same barren plains I’ve just hiked across.
Listen, Hello Games: I just want to see all these lovely things you’ve made. I don’t want to live on Robot World any more. When do I get to do all of the fun stuff?