Yes, you read that right.
Before affirming its position as market-leading screenshot simulator, I actually did like No Man’s Sky. But! In what is olds rather than news, Hello Games’ Sean Murray did tease a mind-blower at the end of the journey. It, let’s just say, didn’t turn out to be all that… mind-blowing.
No matter, it’s not like I can actually be bothered and change my original thoughts of the game which, let me stress, are still honest-to-heart anyway. But! It seems like Hello Games can be bothered. A little bit like George Lucas could’ve. Enter No Man’s Sky ‘Pathfinder’ update. Here’s the trailer:
Now whether there really are those super-hip looking buggies in the game as promised this time around, I can’t confirm. Why? Well, the trailer actually stuttering should be your first clue. My Titan X rig, shockingly never having had problems with No Man’s Sky before, struggles to churn out stable 60 fps… at 1080p… with most settings ways south of ‘this gonna look rad’. And then, with absolute guarantee, crashes as soon as I enter the new photo mode. But! I just can’t find the time to even be pissed off at that.
The thing is I can’t help seeing that with both the ‘Foundations’ and this latest content update, Hello Games are building a game nobody asked for. And I’m not even sorry to say that what it does, is simply show the catastrophic extent of their disconnect from their – not exactly massive any more – player base. The game the (then-potential) customers asked for is what was presented all those months ago – an atmospheric, mystery-veiled space exploration adventure through math-crafted, but living, breathing alien worlds. Many living, breathing alien worlds. Where does base-building – and thus, settling down – slot into that? What role do some space buggies play in all that?
But by far the most surprising turn this weirdness takes is the community’s reaction. To them, ‘it’s now (edging closer to) a game it should’ve been’. ‘Now it’s value for money’. ‘Now it has content’. Well. Either I’m missing something of absolutely critical importance here, or someone, be it Hello Games or the community, is a spineless worm. Full of shit, too.
I mean, how can you sit quietly through a small Internet apocalypse over your blatantly mis-advertised product knowing full fucking well what the angry mob is on about and what needs to be done? And then deliver something entirely else, something that doesn’t even fit the premise of said product properly. Just how blind, or deaf, must you be?
And how can you scream ‘laaaw-sooot’ on top of your lungs, entitled to ‘your’ game, causing that very micro-apocalypse I mention above? But when a mysterious stranger appears with a toy excavator and hands it to you, you shut the fuck up? Maybe, just maybe, I am truly missing something…
Nah. I’m not. It’s all fucking bullshit.
