The main story is... kind of stupid. [Spoilers I guess]

[Nightweaver20xx]

Hear me out, please.

I have played through the main story in NMS almost a dozen times now, and each successive time I get a little more annoyed with it. The KZZTZT static constantly, the pretentious "the whole universe is just a simulation" plot, the boring, dry characters I don't honestly feel any emotional connection to... I could go on.

I have nearly 680 hours in the game, and every time I have to talk with Artemis or Apollo or -null- I just speed through the dialogue. It's such puffed-up nonsense and, like I said, I see it as pretentious writing. There's no real heart to these characters, they're just kind of... there. Someone at Hello Games had this grand vision for a story but they forgot to add in any kind of characterization. You don't even know what these characters are supposed to be or what the story is trying to tell you, I don't at least. Whenever there's any kind of "backstory" it's just clipped garbage like Apollo trying to tell me that he made some mistakes or whatever in his past and boom now he's a robot with a living brain inside. Whatever, I don't care, let me build my base.

The aliens are all humanoid. They are all the same humans with fancy alien heads, although the Gek are a short, squat little race, but that's the greatest variation in body types you see. You could swap out any of their heads with anybody else's and it wouldn't even matter. Why do the robot-type Travellers even need to breathe? The lightbulb head? The pyramid head guy? And is anybody male or female in this damn universe? That's the other thing, Hello Games likes using the gender-neutral "they" and "them" when referring to individuals. It's awkward and stupid. Just. Give. The. Characters. Genders. It's FINE. Other games do it.

Anyway, I just needed to vent. There HAS to be someone else out there who feels like me, who just speeds through all the pretentious, overblown BS just to get unlocks done.

[Dirak2012]

I for one, always feel sad for Artemis... Maybe you lack empathy? 🤔

[OutsidR]

Play one of your other games then. It's only a game.. nothing to get yourself riled over.

[Grimmslayer73]

I agree on the story line. I found it pretty bad. After the first few parts I started skipping through the dialog, then I realized I have to actually pay attention to the dialog because you get presented choices....then I realized you don't have to do them at all and there are other ways to acquire everything.... I'm on my 5th save now and I only did the main story once, and I'm only creating new saves because of the base building limits.

[Nightweaver20xx]

Originally posted by OutsidR:

Play one of your other games then. It's only a game.. nothing to get yourself riled over.

You're clearly missing my point. I feel strongly about the games I play, and when I otherwise enjoy something but disagree with an aspect of it, I'm going to say something. Spend any time around me online and you'll know that's the kind of person I am.

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by Nightweaver20xx:

Originally posted by OutsidR:

Play one of your other games then. It's only a game.. nothing to get yourself riled over.

You're clearly missing my point. I feel strongly about the games I play, and when I otherwise enjoy something but disagree with an aspect of it, I'm going to say something. Spend any time around me online and you'll know that's the kind of person I am.

The story could benefit from being a little more cinematic, but I like the base concept. *shrugs*

[Nightweaver20xx]

And I'm glad you feel that way. People can like whatever they want. I love NMS otherwise. The game itself is very fun. As I've said before though, I post stuff like this to spur discussion and to get things off my chest that otherwise I have no outlet to talk about.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

The story reminds me of the very early King's Quest titles. By today's standards it is difficult to enjoy because it feels like it belongs to an older decade.

Putting aside the way the story is told, the story is interesting, just told very poorly. I did feel sorry for Artemis. As with most of the game, you really have to pay attention and read the text boxes to get anything out of the game.

Some of the descriptions for fauna are pretty funny.

It is unlikely to win any awards for story telling...might even be a case example of how not to tell a story. I guess I cut them some slack because of how difficult it must be to provide the same exact experience for every player regardless of where they are in the immense galaxy. Way points do fail on occasion because of the constraints of procedural generation.

If I was playing the game for the story, would have left a long time ago.

[Kitet]

I am one of those who read these stories only once and skipped in my following games. At first I was like OMG WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I CHOOSE THIS OPTION OMG!... but... nothing happened. Then the next story, and the next. Countless holes in the story, nothing is said firmly and to the end. You are left to fill the blanks yourself, which is impossible. After all, what was meant to be there in place of that -kskskszrk- is in the original author's head and nowhere else. I'm not Jesus to be reading someone's mind. I remember how I feared to choose something decisive at the final atlas terminal and then my disappointment when actually... well, you know. It could make us at least start start from absolute zero, but no.

This leads me to the most disappointing aspect, that is the fact that whatever you do within these stories is meaningles, because it doesn't have relation to the world you live in (in game). These stories are in the game but also somewhat not in there, on the side. Whatever choice you'll make you can get that item / tech / whatever reward later from somewhere else. Ot not. Doesn't matter.

To this day I am also wondering about all the terrifying item descriptions, e.g. antimatter, where it's said that handling it roughly or something isn't advised... I'd like to know how can I handle the antimatter in a way that it would actually DO something unexpected. Or the abyssal treasures, where something was supposed to haunt us... never felt haunted. Maybe my luck finding cool ship has gone down, but nothing else. I mean these descriptions only promise but don't deliver,

I think I wrote somewhere or even in my review, that I like the game. I really do. Otherwise I wouldn't even be here. But I think that story writer seems awfully similar to these japanese mid- or highschoolers writing crazy stories on the web you can read tons of anytime. Or 'their' diet consists of way too many shrooms.

[Dirak2012]

The problem is that working with procedural generation highly limits what you can do with the story.

The universe exist as it is because the algorithm dictates it, you can't change things locally because planets doesn't exist as physical objects. One change would change the entire universe at the same time.

How to tell an story when everyone starts in opposite sides of the galaxy? When you don't know if players are moving forward or backwards, up or down?

The best way to make a story is to have the Anomaly as a controlled environment that you can summon no matter where you are, but even then I don't think a tight story driven narrative is possible.

[Kitet]

I agree with what you say about the galaxy and procedural generation, but this doesn't bar anyone from having an actual, physical NPC character you can meet and do missions with. Currently these story guys exist only as metas you eventually forget, because there's no physical trace of them. They could have some ship or a base or their own freighter, I don't think these can't be made to appear just about anywhere. If not on planets, at least in space. Game has even reserved some land POIs for players' spawn points, you can see them here and there as you go too. So what's the problem with reserving another type of POI for story-related objects or structures, NPC meeting points, whatever. Living ship is done the same way too, I mean the final spawnpoint.

I don't know what causes the story to be so detached but it's definitely possible to make it feel more 'real' if someone wanted. They could make us undergo some drastic experiences like blowing up at the end-story or taking away anything you have except for encyclopedia entries and the like. But the game was meant to be mild and stress-free, which it fails to be anyway for different reasons, more related to quality. I still will play though despite the story.

[Daedrius]

11 11 22

The main story is definitely disappointing. I'm playing a game to immerse myself into an imaginary word and the story itself turns around and says it's not real. Well, thanks for ruining my sole purpose for playing lol

I suppose I can't really complain though. I got a few hundred hours out of the game.

[pazartesi_gorusuruz]

I agree that the main story feels very empty but I found a way that enables me to enjoy the game besides that. The story itself is kinda self-justifying. All the things, the repetition, and one dimensionality is **kinda** explained as part of the story. So I try to take it that way. That doesn't change the fact that it's a cheap shortcut design that I don't like. But you know... I really like the progression aspect of the game. Building bases and improving equipment and ships. Decorating inside the freighter.

I wish the story made a little more sense because it really is very weak. I mean it is a very simple story at the end of the day but, maybe if it was told differently and the universe was a bit more lively then it would have been way better.

I completely agree that there being only 3 alien races and all of them being anthropomorphic, and they all having pretty mediocre and "clony" animations, just feels very dead. I think this game stands somewhere, an ugly spot, between a text-based adventure and a fully fledged action space adventure. Because the dialogues feel like they would be from a text based adventure, emphasized in some *KIZZZT* bits or the way they try to relay emotions and other imagery presentment through messages. But all the meanwhile you are flying around planets and landing on space stations.

It feels like the game doesn't know what it wants to be. I don't wanna do it injustice, I mean I played for like 200-something hours, the game is fun, but the story leaves way much to be desired

[FalcieAdam_]

Since the story was added later, I am honestly fine with the effort that the devs put into the story. It's not alot but it does make me think from time to time...

@Nightweaver20xx Within the 680 hours the gameplay you had, you probably noticed how most of the options ( I SAY MOST, I will get into that ) leads to the same kind of dialogue. Stuff like when you ask about the "Sentinels" or "Atlas" but the dialogue has stuff related to BOTH... or when you Apollo mentions the korvax and the machines and you're given the Cough/state out the obvious choice which both leads to the same situation, which is VERY LAZY STORY NARATION.

Stuff like that I wasn't into, but the more played the game the more I go into some other part of the story that made me think about how the story plays out...

Regardless if it's a Story-Enriched badly initialised game, bugged or not, boring or fun... The journey is the most important thing imo

I agree about the story not being top tier, but it does fill out the void that was left out during release version imo

EDIT: The reason why I said "most" is because there are some branching dialogue that may happen every now and then

[Weaver]

"pretentious"
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also getting tilted because the game doesn't use genders? That sounds like some personal issues that you need to deal with right there, not the game. Maybe some introspection would be good.

[Nightweaver20xx]

The lack of branching storylines brings up another good point -- almost all of your decisions in the story are simply the illusion of choice. It reminds me of a David Cage game (surely people here know who that is), where the game will present different dialogue options or decisions to make that maybe have different temporary consequences but nothing permanent, and it all branches right back into the same spot every time. I guess that's a side-effect again of the procedural generation aspect of the game, that they have to railroad you through the story the same way each time. All that changes is the locations where you interact with the characters and the order you choose to advance the plot.

Branching storylines are very hard to do and require huge amounts of extra programming, and I realize we're still dealing with an indie team of 30 or so people. But it would be nice to have some different consequences for my actions if I choose to, say, help or not help Apollo other than the Atlas telling me whether I did at the end.