Languages, The Atlas Path and the Catalogue

[maestro]

So.... I spent like 10+ minutes trying to find a log of stuff Atlas says to you while you're on the Atlas Path, and I simply can't find it anywhere. Pretty sure at this point, that despite the game logging the entirety of Artemis's quest, down to every word spoken, it records stuff you see in the abandoned buildings' terminals, etc, stuff you see when interacting with monoliths, but it does *NOT* record stuff Atlas says to you that seems kinda, I dunno, important?

Which is kinda stupid, because when you start the Atlas Path, you can't understand anything it says to you. Nearing the end of it, I've gotten probably 50-80 words of it and it'd be nice if I could go back over what it said previously and maybe get an idea of what exactly it's trying to say, but no. Apparently I should have been screenshotting everything and slowly sifting through the word list trying to translate it by hand or something.

This brings me to one of my biggest beefs with the game: huge swaths of story and lore are gated behind language barriers and is one of the worst things about starting a new save file. To be honest, I think language unlocks should be account wide, so that as the player plays the game, the player is the one learning how the languages work over the many iterations a player might send into the world of NMS.

And the Catalogue could really use some help, too. I've never really explored it before, but now that I have, it seems hard to find stuff that I'm looking for, and some of the controls of the catalogue are inconsistent; sometimes the mousewheel scrolls down on a page, but yet in other sections, the mousewheel flips pages instead. It's really weird.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

You are correct that the story and lore is told in the most obscure way possible. The game at launch had almost nothing to do. They added the story lines, such as they are, to provide some direction for players who felt lost in a sandbox world where you really were expected to come up with your goals.

Initially, learning the words was mainly a mini-game to solve puzzles provided by the NPCs in the station(s) to avoid bad consequence and hopefully win good consequences. Those consequences only ranged between getting the back of the hand and a slight hurt to getting some minor item in reward.

During one of the early updates they removed those puzzles but often just left the dialog strings as is. They simply changed the choices you were offered at the end.

The story line/lore just tells you how things came to be the way they are- sort of. This is not a good game if you are hoping for a meaningful conclusion of the tale. There are some interesting/creepy aspects of the story. I have not kept close track of the new autophage/corrupted sentinels tale but it feels like they are slowly moving toward some conclusion type ending that gives more detail on the Atlas failing and maybe even a final quest to try to fix the Atlas/eliminate the Atlas domination. That said, being a sandbox game it is unlikely whatever that conclusion is will be a roll credits-game over type ending.

They are a very small development house (about 30 people) that managed to create a game that mimics something a large AAA development house(thousands of employees) would do. For good or bad, we just have to put up with the flaws and skeleton like depth of most of the features and story.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

You are correct that the story and lore is told in the most obscure way possible. The game at launch had almost nothing to do. They added the story lines, such as they are, to provide some direction for players who felt lost in a sandbox world where you really were expected to come up with your goals.

Initially, learning the words was mainly a mini-game to solve puzzles provided by the NPCs in the station(s) to avoid bad consequence and hopefully win good consequences. Those consequences only ranged between getting the back of the hand and a slight hurt to getting some minor item in reward.

During one of the early updates they removed those puzzles but often just left the dialog strings as is. They simply changed the choices you were offered at the end.

The story line/lore just tells you how things came to be the way they are- sort of. This is not a good game if you are hoping for a meaningful conclusion of the tale. There are some interesting/creepy aspects of the story. I have not kept close track of the new autophage/corrupted sentinels tale but it feels like they are slowly moving toward some conclusion type ending that gives more detail on the Atlas failing and maybe even a final quest to try to fix the Atlas/eliminate the Atlas domination. That said, being a sandbox game it is unlikely whatever that conclusion is will be a roll credits-game over type ending.

They are a very small development house (about 30 people) that managed to create a game that mimics something a large AAA development house(thousands of employees) would do. For good or bad, we just have to put up with the flaws and skeleton like depth of most of the features and story.

I understand that, it's just the stuff that IS there, I would like to be able to read. So, cataloging what is said to us is one way we can eventually read it later, or make the unlocks account-wide. Both seem like they should be easy fixes.

I mean, they literally JUST tweaked the Atlas Path, and I can tell that some of it is different than it used to be... so I suspect the writing could be a little better than it used to be? I dunno. It'd be nice to see it either way without having to look it up on a wiki, assuming someone took the work to translate all of it or cheated all the words onto a new save file.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

You might try the Goatfungus Save Editor on a new save. I believe you can add all the words for the NPC races to the save. Not sure about the Atlas but perhaps.

[wkitty42]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

You might try the Goatfungus Save Editor on a new save. I believe you can add all the words for the NPC races to the save. Not sure about the Atlas but perhaps.

yes, you can add all the words with a click of the "Learn All" button in the "Discovery" tab in the goatfungus save editor... there's also an "Unlearn All" button or you can go down the four columns selecting the words you want to know by checking them for each of the three main races and Atlas... AFAIK the Autophage do not have language you have to learn to understand them...

[Idaho]

Surely one of the wiki pages has documented all the ATLAS lines of text.

[Tirandys]

I have never done this so not sure if it is correct. But I think you get to do the atlas path again in a new galaxy, I don't know if the text would be the same, but it might be if you are doing the path again.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Idaho:

Surely one of the wiki pages has documented all the ATLAS lines of text.

I checked, they have the OLD version archived, but not the new version.

[Despistao]

Where to find the history of the Atlas:

Catalogue & Guide

Categories - The Atlas - Atlas Interface

Categories - Travel Logs - The Journey

Categories - Travel Log - A Metal Footprint

Category Other Story - Abandoned Building

Category - Other Story - Border Ruling

Category - Other Story - sentinel pilar

Category - The Autofague - Monolithic Visions

You know if you have checked all the stories because at the end it gives you 3 markers, while you have them pending 1 marker separates the different texts

[AmberAnvil]

Catalog & Guide / Collected Knowledge / The Atlas / Atlas Interface

[maestro]

Originally posted by Despistao:

Where to find the history of the Atlas:

Catalogue & Guide

Categories - The Atlas - Atlas Interface

Categories - Travel Logs - The Journey

Categories - Travel Log - A Metal Footprint

Category Other Story - Abandoned Building

Category - Other Story - Border Ruling

Category - Other Story - sentinel pilar

Category - The Autofague - Monolithic Visions

You know if you have checked all the stories because at the end it gives you 3 markers, while you have them pending 1 marker separates the different texts

This does not appear to work.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198030690472/screenshot/2422445207197668764/

"Atlas Interface" does not show up despite me having completed the Atlas Path (twice, even, as I did it before this update, and I just completed it yesterday again).

[AmberAnvil]

Originally posted by maestro:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198030690472/screenshot/2422445207197668764/

"Atlas Interface" does not show up despite me having completed the Atlas Path (twice, even, as I did it before this update, and I just completed it yesterday again).

I agree. I have a newer save and just selected the "Atlas Path" for the first time. Went to the Interface, got the plans for the first "seed" and left. There is no record in my Catalog for the "Atlas Interface". The entry does exist in my older, pre-Omega saves. Clearly a new bug introduced with Omega, even though the intent was to update the "Atlas Path"....

Submit a bug report to zendesk (which I have done).

[Despistao]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181007619

If I remember correctly, in Korvax space stations and in the buildings where you have to use the Atlas 2 pass you have some terminals that ask you for "sleep", when you visit them all it gives you the "Atlas interface"