The Best Exercise in Existentialism of Our Generation | Or, why I decided to forgive the creators of No Manâs Sky
(Warning for spoilers to No Manâs Sky)
Today I left my traveller to float for eternity in their cute little space ship a mere 146,933.2 light years from the center of the Euclid Galaxy. From the get go we were told that the goal of No Manâs Sky was to reach the centre of the Galaxy. For the first 60 or so hours of playing the game I ignored this and spent much time exploring every single planet in so much detail other people were probably laughing at me.Â
I fell in love with space creatures of all kinds. I was seemingly much more lucky than other people that were playing the game - I started on a very lush planet, in a system of lush and beautiful planets and it was probably 3 hyper jumps before I found myself in an ugly and seemingly desolate system.
Some of the space creatures seemed more like space monsters and I was okay with that. It seemed plausible at first. Again, I was lucky that it was many planets until I found myself creatures whoâs animation was so weird and ridiculous that it was just ugly.
I fell in love with vista after vista. My favourite part of this early play time was traversing on foot and cresting hills to have my breath taken away from what was revealed beyond. I adored using my jetpack to soar above lakes and throw myself in, plummeting to their beautiful depths.
I watched sunrise after sunrise on a multitude of landscapes and it took me quite a while to feel like this was repetitive or old.
Being a sucker for science fiction and space ships I just couldnât get enough of this world that was full of them! Space ships and trading hubs everywhere!
I tweeted my experience of No Manâs Sky as I do with many games and you can see all the images and little video clips under the twitter tag #crSky . Youâll probably notice that I went through an entire gamut of emotions and frustrations, from the lack of accessibility, to pure joy, to frustration and finally, boredom.Â
The longer I played No Manâs Sky the more I got increasingly mad at it. If you play video games you may have even seen all of the controversy over this game. As with anything to do with video games on the internet it all got a bit out of hand and over the top, but as I played I did begin to see where that spark of anger first came to life.Â
At first I loved it. It was beautiful (not the most beautiful, but with its own charm), it felt close to what I wanted from exploring space - especially finding, naming, cataloguing animals and flying around in a space ship. But then I got so dismayed at the game that all I could fathom was that this game was simply incomplete - that the developers had all of these big ideas but that they just didnât get any of them finished and that some serious content was lacking. Now Iâve finished* the game Iâm not so sure. *walked away from.
The biggest disappointment for me came with the lack of conclusion to following the path of the Atlas. The biggest frustration was the complete lack of instruction or feedback on what was needed from me as a traveller in my journey.Â
As an example, Iâll tell you about the Atlas Path - the Atlas are a mysterious being or force (you never find out what exactly) that may or may not be the benevolent creators of the universe. Whatever they are or were, theyâre long gone, but theyâve left behind a trail for a mysterious group of sentient beings* to follow by visiting interfaces theyâve left behind. *The Travellers - thatâs you.Â
You receive Atlas Stones for each Atlas interface you visit, and in order to âcompleteâ that quest you need pretty much every one. Except you donât know this and they can also be sold at trade terminals and to aliens for a very attractive price at a time when earning cash can be a slog. So, I sold most of mine and I got to the end of the Atlas path and I couldnât complete the quest (!!). A quick internet search revealed that it was okay and I didnât miss anything anyways, not even any animation... just a little bit of text and no proof that anything actually happened.
This brings me to what made me wary when I first started playing the game - thereâs very little animation or real action in the game. Nearly everything is a text based description of what is happening, or simple lore. My initial reaction was what the fuck? did I just pay $80 for space dungeons and dragons with an invisible DM describing everything to me?
To answer this question after who knows how many near-infinite hours of gameplay - yes I did. But Iâm not mad about it anymore. In my final two hours of playing the game I had an epiphany and I forgave the creators of No Manâs Sky for most of their transgressions.Â
I forgave them for forcing me into a colonialist journey of claiming places I discovered that were already settled.Â
I forgave them for the weirdly uncomfortable mix of sheer beauty, majesty, silliness and total ugliness of the procedurally generated worlds and creatures.Â
I forgave them for making me feel like I had to spend countless hours searching for a rare random drop of the Atlas Pass v2 only to discover there was literally nothing but some new furniture behind those doors.Â
I forgave them for not âfinishingâ the intriguing stories they had begun to weave through this expansive galaxy.Â
I forgave them for not giving me enough of an opportunity to learn the Atlas language so that I had no idea what the Atlas was saying to me, even though I worked hard and spent days searching for monoliths.
I forgave them for boring me out of my own mind scouring for resources, building up my equipment and cataloguing space monsters.Â
I forgave them for making me hate entire alien races; I forgave them for making me love another but giving me no substance too.
I forgave them for making the journey to the centre of the galaxy so horrifically arduous and never ending that I simply gave up and left my traveller to float for eons in the vast emptiness of space.
But why? Why forgive a games developer for making a video game that seemingly failed to deliver on every promised front? My personal epiphany was that this is actually not far off what living this role in space would mean to a sentient being. Being completely alone and not even knowing who or what you are, but being told your destiny is to toil and travel and toil and travel and just do it for eternity over and over.
This idea poked into my brain several times while playing, but I kept pushing it back because I wanted more. I wanted to be entertained. I wanted an actual ending to my story; I worked HARD at this dammit, I deserve a good round, proper ending. I spent all this time barely being entertained and I donât even get an ending?Â
I read this article from Polygon and I saw what actually happens when you reach the centre of the galaxy and I couldnât ignore that idea anymore. Itâs perfect. Itâs almost too perfect. Youâre living an infinite loop of difficult hard work and wonder (but also boredom), continually searching for the illusive meaning to your journey. This is existentialism. This is the Franz Kafka video game I always wanted and I didnât even know it until I finally let go of my traveller and left them to float for eternity in a beautiful expanse of stars.
