Does this game have an ending?

[Brady]

before i start playing this eventually, are there definitive endings to this? if so, how many? no spoilers please.

[Lindy Bomber]

Not really.

There is a story line to follow, but it is mostly about learning the lore and history of the universe. Finishing it does change anything and you can completely ingore it.

You decide what you want to do in game and you decide when your done.

[Brady]

thank you. also, i read that there are different story paths to follow. is this true?

[Meghan J."Valkyrie" Castellano]

does my save delete it self if i just finish story line ?

[Meghan J."Valkyrie" Castellano]

Originally posted by balesb060:

thank you. also, i read that there are different story paths to follow. is this true?

its true i just chose one of the paths

[Lindy Bomber]

There are several story lines, some need into the next others Stand on their own. There no decisions that effect the outcome of the story, you are an observer.

Completing the story does not delete your save. You can explore, build, what ever as long as you want

[Brady]

thanks again. also it probably doesnt delete save.

[Simons Mith]

There are several parallel story threads that you can advance separately. You can concentrate on one, or switch between them. So, technically, yes, there are several story paths, but they're kind of a fraction of a story each. There's not really a hard plot to follow, it's just a stream of lore. You learn about what's happened, rather than doing anything that drives galactic events forwards to some spectacular conclusion. [Edit: replaced 'dramatic' with 'spectacular']

[Simons Mith]

... The thought occurs that if No Man's Sky even did put in any long-term dramatic plots, I'd expect something more in the style of Fallen London than, say, Mass Effect. Fallen London is a lovely game, but it's sure not big on pyrotechnics.

[Furblesnert]

Originally posted by balesb060:

thanks again. also it probably doesnt delete save.

The only time the game deletes a save is if you die in permadeath mode. Finishing the story really doesn't change anything.

[davidb11]

Originally posted by Simons Mith:

... The thought occurs that if No Man's Sky even did put in any long-term dramatic plots, I'd expect something more in the style of Fallen London than, say, Mass Effect. Fallen London is a lovely game, but it's sure not big on pyrotechnics.

What the heck is Fallen London? Never heard of that.
Also, what does pyrotechnics have to do with this?

[Simons Mith]

[A bit OT] Fallen London is a... well, it's quite hard to describe. You float about a sort of gothic underground seascape exploring distant islands and trading. There are multiple story threads which are implemented as little text snippets that you trigger as you visit different places throughout the game. They are very well-written and evocative, many in an understated horror style, and in NMS the interactions you get with aliens and monuments, or the log entries for returning frigates could easily be expanded to work in a similar way. The travellers' logs you read from Corrupted Terminals are very Fallen London in style, now I think of it.

Difference is, at present in NMS you go to a monument, you get a link to a ruin, you go to the ruin, you dig up a random treasure, and that 'storyline' is over after 2-3 steps. The Fallen London storylines are 20+ steps sometimes. And you are typically advancing several of them in parallel. Where NMS does have long story threads, such as the Terminals, they're just text logs, and you rarely get to do anything other than read them. What long threads are there in NMS? There are some (I'm avoiding spoilers here), but in Fallen London they're better woven in. But NMS might be big enough to procedurally generate some longer threads, and incorporate custom-written ones too. Hell, I could write some, if the right parts of the game were exposed to let me plumb them in.

However, Fallen London is kind of texty - beautifully presented, but written e.g. as the captain's journal, so you don't get anything where it ends in a spectacular CGI explosion of all the galaxy's mass effect relays at the climax of the storyline. (Or whatever happens in Mass Effect. I've never played it. I know it has big things blowing up at the end, so I assume that's what's happening.)

But this thread got me thinking about the unexpected similarities between Fallen London and NMS which had never occurred to me before. Does that answer your questions?

[Asmosis]

Originally posted by davidb11:

Originally posted by Simons Mith:

... The thought occurs that if No Man's Sky even did put in any long-term dramatic plots, I'd expect something more in the style of Fallen London than, say, Mass Effect. Fallen London is a lovely game, but it's sure not big on pyrotechnics.

What the heck is Fallen London? Never heard of that.
Also, what does pyrotechnics have to do with this?

That's the sunless skies/sunless seas games i think.

[BoneYard]

Yes, follow the story and you can unlock new Galaxies.

[Simons Mith]

@Asmosis Oops, you're right. The actual games are Sunless Seas/Sunlesss Skies, and that's what I was thinking of, but there is also a free web game set in the same universe, which works in a very similar way, which /is/ called Fallen London. https://www.fallenlondon.com/login. But yeah, I particularly meant Sunless Seas.

[indigo]

I suppose it "ends" with the "Quit to Desktop" option, otherwise, this is the game that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started playing it not knowing what it was, and they'll continue playing it forever just because this is the game that never ends....