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Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

I still think it's a remarkable success story and they can and should be incredibly proud of what they've built. But this vision of what is meant by cosmic depth and expansiveness seems to tragically miss the point.

Compare it to even our own solar system where even so much as a new high-res photo of the hexagon storm on Saturn comes with stunning new and specific detail, or the "heart" on Pluto, we're practically ambushed with novel configurations of atmospheric dynamics and geology. It's frustratingly rare for games to truly activate that feeling of wonder.

I think NMS is still an unbeatable deal for what it is as a game but it's a frustrating near miss flyby of what I think people want a true space exploration game to feel like.

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The best space exploration game I've played is Outer Wilds (https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/), but instead of the NMS sandbox there are puzzles.

one of those games where i wish i could erase my memory just to play it again, still think about it, i think it's like a year ago i played it, maybe more. idk. great game.

Outer Wilds is really an amazing game. I highly recommend playing it without looking at anything online: when I started I reached for google every time I was stuck, just to realise I could have found answers if I has searched just a little bit more. After a while I stuck to a rule to never look at answers online, and it was such a bliss to finally crack puzzles after trying lots of different things.

Unpopular opinion, but for me, no amount of puzzles/story can offset the utter obnoxious frustration of the time loop.

In case you want to enjoy it anyway, I've got a recommendation: there are quite a few mods for the game, including one which quadruples the time limit, essentially making the time between major events 4 times as long.

In that configuration, the mechanic is still there but you aren't feeling on a clock anymore and can explore and play around with stuff at your own pace.

As someone hating any kind of timed missions in games, that's what made a frustrating game into a masterpiece for me personally.

I didn't think to check for mods. Thanks.

I played it recently. Very good game (although mediocre ending if we're being honest). The thing they did really really well is that it's true exploration in the sense that you could complete the game very quickly if you've already played it, because the only thing you need to complete it is some knowledge that you discover by exploring.

For example there might be a wormhole that takes you to a different destination if you fly through it backwards. You're very unlikely to find that out by chance, but if you explore you'll find a thing that tells you (probably behind some other puzzle).

Great game.

> although mediocre ending if we're being honest

I'm not saying ending was perfect, but I can't think of a better way of ending it.

I couldn't get into every day dialog etched in stone. It's one thing to find an old ruin that has some profound sounding thing like "All men are created equal". But it's beyond the pale for people to write tablets that are effectively mundane things like "Woke up and had breakfast".

I think Elite Dangerous had this same issue, at least the years after it was released when I played it. You have this whole to-scale galaxy to explore, but the vast majority of them contain no story, no life, no space stations, no other players, and are just similar rocks and noble gas bags over and over. Once you've seen about 100 systems, you've seen them all. Which is likely what our real galaxy is like, too.

The game is 2 million light years wide, but a meter deep.

I always find it interesting to read takes like this. I get it, I also bounced multiple times off Elite Dangerous due to boredom.

But in the end it was always intended to be Euro Truck Simulator in Space.

The main problem was that (just like ETS2 interestingly) there was no real satisfying end-game money sink.

For me the colonialisation update fixed that. But I also find interesting that it seems to be very personal. For me it is motivating that eventually you will have one or multiple systems that you made "your own" (I loved playing X2 and X3 back in the day for the same reason). But lots of people played Elite for years and just hauling cargo and honking systems for the heck of it, and just watching the credit balance go up was motivating enough seemingly?

Have you played Outer Wilds? It nails this feeling. If you haven't played it, don't read or watch a single thing about it and just play it with zero expectations.

100%. I installed and began playing Outer Wilds on gamepass thinking that I was playing Outer Worlds. After about 10 minutes I knew I was wrong, it didn't feel like an Obsidian game. One of the best mistakes I ever made when it came to gaming.

I wonder how many other people have had that same delightfully lucky misfortune. :)

What do you think people want a true space exploration game to feel like?

Depends on which they want more. True space or true game.

Rick and Morty. Procgen surfaces but a human story under every furniture-aliens-sit-on-humans multiverse.

Or alternatively Scavengers Reign

Personally I want spelljammer. Baldurs Gate meets Sea of Thieves in space with 80s killer clowns

There is so much drama that can happen there and the scale is the least of it.

There are different ways to take it.

There's the Kerbal Space Program approach, where space exploration is tough and you need to learn a LOT to succeed at it. The tradeoff of this is a high sense of accomplishment, where simply landing and returning from another body feels like you did something incredible.

There's also the Outer Wilds approach, where the story carries it. Moving around isn't hard at all, but you have specific goals to accomplish that move you towards a final ending. Diversity in how you accomplish those goals makes it feel fresh.

Mass Effect is similar, where you have some freedom to explore, but it's again in the pursuit of this broader story. So exploration feels like a rich side quest more than the main point of the task.

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