NPCs in planets?

[DART VON FABLE]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking about starting a gameplay of No Man's Sky, but I have a question about the game. I'd like to know if, during exploration, we come across NPC cities or villages where we can interact with them, or if all the life forms we encounter during gameplay are just non-sentient and have no social interactions with our character?

[wkitty42]

you can interact with NPC, yes... some may have a mission for you...

[M.V.Petra]

Most (like 90%) you come across you can ask for help learning language or give them gifts to increase your reputation, some have specific "events" that involve making a choice and possibly being rewarded, some sell you things. There's "Settlements" that are like villages of people, not sure the extent of which you can interact with them, but I suspect not very much. There's people that you can hire to work for you, that will give you quests to do
(because apparently that's what constitutes "working") and later on in the game, you can find small communities of 1-5 people, all of whom you can talk to or do quests for.

[Lemecc]

There are sometimes NPCs on planets, but I don't think they're really what you're asking for.

There are no cities. There are "settlements"; extremely small groups of NPCs, fairly rare, and come in only two flavours. A "full" settlement of a few buildings the player can assist by donating resources to, or a "minor" settlement, which is a single building. If you want to find and talk to NPCs, Trading Posts and Space Stations are better in that they have a lot more interactable NPCs wandering around in them.

You can talk to some NPCs, but the majority only have flavour text for you. None of them are going to start some big quest chain or become in-depth characters for you to socialise with.

[RJS]

Random pilots landing on planets may sell harder to find stuff like modules. That's about it you can't shoot them or anything unless they're flying.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

There are small assortments of buildings for the most part...not even sure village size is appropriate. There are some larger buildings occasionally. Maybe a dozen or so NPCs max. Usually just a couple of NPCs at small locations. They all will interact with you but it is pretty basic. There is not a lot of variety in interactions.

There are settlements where you can become an overseer. Those are the closest to a small town/village. Never tried to count but seems like 30 to 40 settlers wandering around. The interactions with most of them are really terse. You can see their thought balloons which can be entertaining.

There are no cities and probably never will be. It is a really fun game but best to park your imagined expectations at the door and just accept it on its own terms.

[wkitty42]

i should have added to my initial comment that you should visit and interact with all the cylindrical black Knowledge Stones you find all over the planets and moons... also talk to the NPCs in the Space Stations... the goal is to learn their languages so you can understand them when they ask you for things... this is also needed when entering some of the buildings to interact with their terminals...