...is that it? [Ending Spoilers for NEXT]

[evildrganymede]

WARNING: This contains spoilers for the end of the NEXT game.


So, after wading through the storyline in NEXT - which I thought was really quite good now, with all the stuff going on with Artemis, Apollo, and Null and the secret of "16" - I stepped through the Final Portal and confronted the Atlas... cried out six times, and then refused to Reset The Universe.

And then Atlas basically just said "OK, fine, come back when you're ready?" and sent me back to a random planet and gave me the recipe for the Remembrance Stone, and suddenly the 16 minutes doesn't matter anymore (despite it appearing to countdown earlier)? So are my only options to either reset the universe (i.e. start off again with nothing in a new galaxy, and it's probably still 16 minutes from The End), or just carry on playing in my current Galaxy until I get bored and go back to Atlas to reset it? Is that really it or did I miss something? I was really hoping there'd be some way to stop the shutdown, fix the ATLAS, and/or break the cycle...

I also visited all the Atlas Paths and got the recipes for all the Atlas Stones (though I haven't made any of them - is that worth doing?) and got all 16 Glyphs (which were given to me on each jump I did). I did go to one more Atlas Station past the final one (where you get the Heart of the Sun stone) and that was weird - it didn't have one of those huge Atlas Interface orb things in it, and I could walk all the way up to where the big Atlas Orb would be, and at the base there is a little plinth with a hole that looks supiciously like it could fit one of those Atlas Seeds (maybe the Heart of the Sun?). So are we supposed to build that and put it in the socket and then something happens that stops the countdown to the End and fixes Atlas?

Am I missing something here or does the ending really fall flat on its face at the last hurdle? Because if the only options are to just carry on as if nothing is happening or Reset the Universe and start again from scratch then that's really disappointing and unsatisfying.

[evildrganymede]

I'll try that (I have a previous save I can use, though I'll need to play the last hour again) but you'll forgive me for being skeptical since nothing preceding that implies that the next universe will be any different from the previous one (or any earlier pre-game incarnations before the player came along), or that the threat of the ATLAS' destruction has gone away - though since we know that 16 minutes lasts forever it's rendered somewhat moot anyway.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by UncivilS3rvant:

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

You do end up in a "new simulation", but you don't start out fresh, the reset IS the ending to the storyline, but you don't repeat what you did before. You do get more lore and background information after you pass through to help tie up the story.

So end of the chapter rather than the end of the book?

The story lines are just side quests that you can do or not. The end of the game is when you stop playing (or die in permadeath :-).

I actually find the end of the atlas quest much less satisfying...

[Shame]

@evildrganymede The ending is pretty lack-luster, but a game like this needs much more thought put into it for an ending to begin with. Remember; this is story-driven MULTIPLAYER we're talking about!

The ending needs to wrap up in a way that allows other players to experience the same thing, as if nothing happened in essence. Otherwise, if someone completes the game and the universe has changed drastically, then it's changed for everyone, or you can never meet anyone who hasn't completed the game yet after this, splitting the community, as if finishing the game is like downloading a DLC that you MUST have to play with those who have it and are playing with it. And then everyone else gets the short end of the stick.

This is probably why they had to rush such a bad ending to begin with; to implement multiplayer later, that was the only way. Otherwise, they would need to remove an otherwise decent ending for the sake of making multiplayer work now/after Atlas Rises.

[FoolishOwl]

Originally posted by evildrganymede:

Exactly. That isn't an end to the story, it's just a repeat of the futile first playthrough in a new galaxy that is functionally very similar to the previous one but with a different name.

The point is that resetting the galaxy, or not, isn't the resolution of the story. The resolution of the story is getting the answers to the questions that you began with: who are you, where are you, and why? You now know the answers.

Originally posted by evildrganymede:

It's a repeat of the cycle, "All of this has happened before and will happen again", etc. Nothing is resolved, the 16 minutes remain, except now you know that even that's a lie because those 16 minutes will never end within the simulation anyway (given the "refuse to restart the simulation" ending). I mean how is that not nihilistic?!

It's not nihilistic because it's not a denial of meaning. The story frames the gameplay, which is about exploration; exploration is a metonym for life. Notice the recurring note in the stories of the previous Travellers, the longing to explore forever.

Originally posted by evildrganymede:

Thus, it has a satisfying resolution because all his sacrifices weren't for nothing, and the universe is saved.

The universe was Bastian's imagination. That was a story about nihilism, or rather, about overcoming nihilism through artistic creation. Reading it as simply a story about literally saving the universe rather misses the point.

[FoolishOwl]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

Have you actually reset the galaxy yet, or are you assuming you know what happens when you do? If you haven't, you really should before you complain about the ending not being satisfying.

You do end up in a "new simulation", but you don't start out fresh, the reset IS the ending to the storyline, but you don't repeat what you did before. You do get more lore and background information after you pass through to help tie up the story.

I wasn't complaining about the ending. I only said, the text in the story literally says that resetting the galaxy won't change the fact that ATLAS is dying.

I haven't gone through the reset -- I wanted to stay in Euclid, for a few reasons -- but I hadn't heard there was additional story content after the reset; that's news to me.

[insipidcity]

FoolishOwl laid out a lot of lore from the game that casual players aren't going to encounter. Takes a LOT of hours of play of devoted digging to get the deeper parts of the game uncovered. Ultimately, all the story stuff is a prequel to continued exploration, as has been said, and exploration is really what this game is about, and the story is almost like a curiosity to catch your attention.

The lore, if you want to take it to the next level, is found in several different places, and takes patience to uncover. I found it all and it really enriched the game for me, personally, but still, the exploration has to be to main fascination with the game. I have a friend who has over 3000 hours in this game, and he hasn't found all the lore yet because it's not his thing. He builds, he trades wares, he explores, he takes naps while his plants are growing, whatever he wants. Make it your own little happy place. Outside bites quite often, and NMS can be a pleasent place to unwind, rather than holding all that stress in your gut. (Not saying you're stressed. Just speaking generally.)

[Befitzero]

The Atlas story line was part of the Atlas Rise patch, it just tacked on a story that was not avaiable when the game released. I have a feeling that now that they have released NEXT they may go back and finish up the story and give it a better ending some where donw the line, but who knows since they don't make their road map public knowledge.

[evildrganymede]

Originally posted by FoolishOwl:

The point is that resetting the galaxy, or not, isn't the resolution of the story. The resolution of the story is getting the answers to the questions that you began with: who are you, where are you, and why? You now know the answers.

Those aren't really the questions that I had. OK, I'm different to the Gek/Korvax/Vy'Keen, but from the start there is confusion between Travellers and Anomalies (are they two different things? The choose-your-appearance thing seems to think they are, but the story seems to think that Travellers are the Anomalies). But really who and what Travellers are didn't really bother me that much (and wasn't actually answered for me anyay, at least in anything that I found).

The more important questions I had were those revealed by the story - who and where was Artemis, where was Apollo, what did Null do, what was wrong with the universe, what is the significance of 16, what is ATLAS and can we stop it from dying and destroying all the universes? And all of those for me were addressed in a satisfying way except the last one (which was answered by "no, but it turns out that it's not going to end any time soon anyway so don't worry about it").

[Dirak2012]

You can't fix the Atlas because you are inside the atlas, you are a dream. You are part of the imagination of a man reminiscing its life in the few seconds before he is runned over by a truck, you can't save him.
Those 16 minutes are real time outside of the Atlas, which are an eternity inside that dream.
There is nothing that anyone can do to save of fix the atlas.

[evildrganymede]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

You can't fix the Atlas because you are inside the atlas, you are a dream. You are part of the imagination of a man reminiscing its life in the few seconds before he is runned over by a truck, you can't save him.
Those 16 minutes are real time outside of the Atlas, which are an eternity inside that dream.
There is nothing that anyone can do to save of fix the atlas.

Or the Atlas has got stuck in a loop and needs to be kicked out of it. We're clearly an "Anomaly" which means we're different from everything else we're not really part of the program like the main three races are. So maybe there could have been a way for us to send a signal to another external agent - a diagnostic system outside Atlas or something - that could have identified and repaired what the issue was. Maybe Atlas is on a spaceship about to crash into a planet and we could have turned on the autopilot or something. Who knows.

It's not as if there's a lack of things that could have been done to offer some kind of resolution to the story beyond "nope, it's all hopeless and pointless" (and sorry, I really don't see anything optimistic or uplifting in how the game ends at all, at least not in the way it's been done. There are ways to do that - that weren't done here - but the only thing it made me feel was disappointment).

[insipidcity]

I think we should all remember that No Man's Sky isn't finished. It is a work in progress, so what can or will happen is up to Hello Games. They can do anything they want with this because it's science fiction. Heck, 2.0 could be getting out of the Atlas and into a carapace left by the possibly electronic creators of the Atlas. The travelers are anomolous, because they keep existing even after the Atlas resets. According to the story, that's why we can interact. And there's Telamon, too. What's it going to do? It's a non-Traveler, sentient anomoly. Point? Be patient on the lore thing. NEXT is like the next book in an ongoing series. Gotta wait for the author to put out the next book in the series. Can take a while to finish something (hopefully) epic. Lol. Explore and build and have fun along the way while you're waiting.

[Dirak2012]

According with the text at the reset screen, the whole purpose of the simulation is that the atlas is trying to see the future, it's own death. By creating a simulation of the universe tries to recreate its existence and see how it will die.
However most likely the simulation grows unstable and glitches out, needing to be reset to try again. Maybe the atlas thinks that by seeing the future it can save itself?
Who knows.

[ZombieHunter]

The story is trying to be edgy but is just more artsy fartsy amateur garbage. The story means nothing. Now you can do whatever you want is really what it means.

[BaneBlackGuard]

Originally posted by evildrganymede:

Originally posted by FoolishOwl:

The point is that resetting the galaxy, or not, isn't the resolution of the story. The resolution of the story is getting the answers to the questions that you began with: who are you, where are you, and why? You now know the answers.

Those aren't really the questions that I had. OK, I'm different to the Gek/Korvax/Vy'Keen, but from the start there is confusion between Travellers and Anomalies (are they two different things? The choose-your-appearance thing seems to think they are, but the story seems to think that Travellers are the Anomalies). But really who and what Travellers are didn't really bother me that much (and wasn't actually answered for me anyay, at least in anything that I found).

The more important questions I had were those revealed by the story - who and where was Artemis, where was Apollo, what did Null do, what was wrong with the universe, what is the significance of 16, what is ATLAS and can we stop it from dying and destroying all the universes? And all of those for me were addressed in a satisfying way except the last one (which was answered by "no, but it turns out that it's not going to end any time soon anyway so don't worry about it").

The answers to these kinds of questions are at least implied in the lore. Don't rely on the text you get during the story quests itself to answer all. Many things are answered in the lore. Much of it is left to interpretation, but there IS enough there to at least imply a coherent set of answers to these questions. It's a pretty neat situation they describe in the lore.

[EvilPolygons]

To each their own, I guess.
I loved the Artemis storyline and all the associated bits of lore (including the ARG stuff). The eventual fate of Artemis is interesting precisely because the protagonist is ultimately no more "real" than the simulated Artemis.

Also, the cyclical nature of the simulation is the story's strength, not its weakness. The big "reveal" in NMS is sort of like waking up from the Matrix, only to discover you're nested inside an endless number of matrices (ie, galaxies).

As for the importance of the number 16, you eventually discover that it's a LOT more important to the Atlas itself, than to you as a Traveller/Anomaly. 16 seconds might as well be an inifinity to a simulated entity existing within the Atlas framework.

So, in the end, you're left with the choice to either become a galaxy-hopping Traveller and spend your 16 seconds (however long that is) exploring the multiverse of Atlas, or stay in Euclid. But after leaving Euclid, this time you wake up crashed on an alien world and know EXACTLY who you are. No amnesia. You have evolved, and you remember everything. And that's cool.

Anyway, like I said, I loved every bit of it.