Alone in Public - A "No Man's Sky" Review 

I'm a foreigner in a country in which I can only speak a few words and phrases of the native language, and barely anyone can speak mine. Dan's description of No Man's Sky could sum up much of my experience here. As I turn to games as a way to feel connected with a community and to engage in a shared activity with long-time friends back home, this sounds like exactly the kind of game I would avoid. Thank you for your critical assessment of No Man's Sky. While it does solidify my choice not to purchase the game, I can appreciate its artistic merit, and I understand why some would love it.

Looking back at this as well HBomberguy's video makes me wonder about how the game would have turned out today if it wasn't marketed the way it was. If they instead decided to follow this existential and nomadic experience rather than turn the game into what people expected it to be when it was being overhyped. The base building and multiplayer seem fun and all, but I can't help but imagine what it could have looked like if they had followed the initial spirit of the game as it was during launch

I’m a truck driver and when he was describing this game, I felt he was describing my job, with the exception of an environmental suit. I appreciate the video and thank you for convincing me not to get this game. My job is lonely enough.

Watching this video in 2020 is quite weird. The game has evolved a lot.

my favourite video of yours so far - "an unsolved world, plagued by melancholy", I really loved that line.

Death of the programmer?

I wonder how basebuilding and other updates factor in or counter the point of this video. You now have an incentive to find a beautiful planet with a stable weather system and build a base and stay. This becomes your home.

I'd love to see your viewpoint on the game now that so much has changed, especially in the loneliness area. The game has since become a lot more populated, as well as adding the ability to make your own home. There's a Reddit post that proposes that morale of No Man's Sky is evolving, turning from a game about loneliness to game about being connected in an infinite universe. I know you probably won't make a video on it, but I'd still love to here what you have to say about the game now.

Dan, do you need a hug?

I've seen some comments here how people kinda wished NMS had kept those more existential, lonely elements after all the updates its gotten over the years. All I can really do is suggest Outer Wilds. It's a beautiful game about exploring a solar system to piece together its history, and it's an incredible experience of a game.

I don't really see anything in this video that I personally disagree on despite the fact that it didn't convince me that NMS is not a good game. Like with many other arguments on the internet I feel like this comment section is just a bunch of people screaming at a wall instead of actually talking to each other.

I do enjoy games where a seemingly blank slate protagonist gradually takes on or implies aspects of a personal story you don't know. It's why I think Chell is such an effective character.

If only people's problems were the actual game itself. It's the hype machine and blame on the dev for broken promises that overshadow all the good parts. A game like this will only be enjoyed long after release for what it truly is. In the meantime, I'll be playing Starbound.

This is a fun and reasonable comment section.

damn, that road to calgary looks beautiful

"alone but in public" is actually the perfect descriptor for what my favorite places and activities are to destress. going to a restaurant or movie, mall or park, by myself. alone, but in public.

This is a good breakdown of the game, it just makes the game sound IMMENSELY depressing. And I neither want nor need more depression.

so are you suggesting that this game tries to make us a happy Sisyphus?

I'd never even heard the term 'nu-male' before looking at this comments section. An entertaining read. A lot of angry people with little to say. Never played the game itself, but I find everything else happening outside of the game quite interesting. This video was an interesting perspective on game and its themes, though I wouldn't really call it a review. I recently discovered the channel, and I'm enjoying your back-catalogue.

I haven't played NMS (I don't have the right console), but based on what you and Hbomberguy have said about the game, I'm starting to see some parallels between it and Splendor & Misery, the new Afrofuturist concept album by experimental hip-hop group clipping. Both on the album itself and in interviews promoting it, the group has made a really interesting critique of Lovecraft: cosmic horror "is only horrifying to those who thought they were the center of everything to begin with." They're making this point within the specific context of white supremacy (the album's narrative centers around the sole survivor of a slave uprising commandeering an interstellar cargo ship and piloting it into the unknown rather than returning to a system that oppresses him), but I think the themes of No Man's Sky are nonetheless in the same ballpark, subverting the idea that being tiny and insignificant is necessarily scary. When you expect your games to be power fantasies, a game that leaves you as adrift as NMS does is bound to be off-putting. But to certain people, that kind of inconsequentiality could be liberating. I really hope this makes sense.

wtf I love No Man's Sky now

I would LOVE to see a follow up to see how the multitudinous updates have changed his appraisal of NMS.

So, they made a game that wasn't fun (in the classical gamey sense), felt empty, and that kind of works for it if you go in with a certain perspective eh? Sounds like they made an unintentional 'artsy' game. I think I like that.

oh, how I loved vanilla No Man's Sky

I loved the loneliness aspect of this game. Remember that I played it from beginning to end in a few sittings. Loved the fact that you don't need to engage in battles without end and the exploration. Some people don't like loneliness because they don't feel well by themselves, a problem that I never had. Nice review.

Nice! A very poetic and genuine thought-provoking piece. Well done.//Someone just "passing through" in public.

You look like a guy who would love No Man's Sky

I didn't think anyone 'got' this game like I did. And....I am now going to listen to Modest Mouse every time I play it. I knew there was a reason I subscribed, not only for your intelligent views on many many MANY subjects, but the fact that we share similar views.

The vast, inarticulate hate toward this game, with the occasional thoughtful praise makes me want to buy it

Would love a 2022 follow-up to see how the updates affect your view of the gaming experience

All the points made are true, but for me, No Man's Sky is a cluster of cool ideas brought to ruin by a lack of meaningful gameplay. Yes, there is value to be found in the game, but the fact its mechanics are an endless loop of filling bars to go to a new place so you can keep your bars filled takes a lot away from the atmosphere of it. There's no real driving motivation behind things. I think the main reason NMS is so hated lies mostly in the blatant lies leading up to the release. There's a long list of features the devs literally said would be in the game, and aren't. People bought it based on lies, and it doesn't really matter what actually is there; the buyer was spurned and insulted. Additionally, on PC there's already a shit-ton of games in the genre, so NMS' minimal feature list leaves the whole thing low on the list of games in the genre. If you love it, that's awesome and I'm glad the pre-release bullshit didn't ruin things. It's both a-ok and wonderful to enjoy things, regardless of if they're good or bad.

This is one of the most 2016 video essays I've seen.

Is it possible to somehow get this version of the game, from before it was "fixed"?

I tried playing this game after watching your video, but I couldn't get into it. I started on a planet, needing a special yellow plant among many yellow plants. All I could do was run around trying to find it, die, reload, collect it if I found anything, rinse, repeat. I don't know if I did something wrong, because the game didn't tell me anything. Yes, I'm bad at video games, but I still want to play. People like me exist.

Beautiful analysis. I wonder what your thoughts are on the game now, in 2019, after all the changes it has gone through since launch...

Even if this is true - and, more importantly, intentional - it marks No Man's Sky as an experience, rather than a game, and it's the kind of experience that not many people can handle. Humans can't handle that kind of loneliness, it messes with our heads and leaves us feeling... worse. While some people will be able to play it, some people would be held off by how they've never been in a situation like it before, ignored by a world that doesn't care for them. And some people would find it too close to the life they've been living to want to touch it.

Aaaand after like one and a half years the fans of Folding Ideas finally got an actual Episode after so much time, Epic- 4:30 6 years later and the game is more connected then ever, but this perspective is good to have next to most who said "Its Boring" back in launch year.

I do like your interpretation of NMS very much. But I kinda feel like the newer updates ot the game did undermine your interpretation somehow^^

The protagonist in No Man’s Sky is all but alone. There is not a single planet in the whole universe that hasn’t been completely colonized before your arrival. There is nothing to discover because everything has been discovered before your arrival. Or better, the only thing to discover is the fact that you never are the discoverer of anything in the whole universe. That’s how I see it.

I wish the game had embraced its identity instead of caving to public pressure. It was a much more interesting game when it was actually doing something unique, now it just blends in with all the other sandbox survival games.

The ending was beautiful

I played 200+ hours of vanilla no man's sky, but it lost that magic no sooner than the first big update

5:00 "a constant gentle forward pressure" 5:53 "alone but not unique" 10:32 "you're just passing through, alone in public"

Subnautica is a similar concept but more engaging in a game-ish sort of way

The sheer amount of people who can't handle someone liking a game that they dislike...

I had a good time playing No Man's Sky near the beginning. I think the updates added a lot of complexity where it wasn't needed. But whatever, it seems to appeal to a wider audience now.

I'm pretty disappointed by the domestic direction that NMS has taken for all of its updates. At the launch of Vanilla I recognised that the pull of NMS was about moving and seeing new things, being compelled to find sights that others have never seen. I made a walking sim mod (basically a cheat mod that let me ignore or speed-up resource collecting and the need to invest in environmental protection), installed other mods that made the world gen more wild and varied, and had a great time floating around taking photos of nice things. I was hoping that the devs would see ideas like this and run with it, but the only thing they've done for this kind of gameplay is add Creative mode.

This video made me excited about this game again. Bumping it up on my wish list

I respect your point and I've heard others make the same arrangement. But I feel like any of us could replicate the same experiencing playing No Man's Sky simply by finding some semi-isolated patch of woods and going for a walk.

Aaaaaand it should of been 30 dollars. Not full price. It's a good experience to have, but not worth choosing instead of other things

No man's sky: the existential lonely one man road trip to an event that gets cancelled so you have to drive back and you end up contemplating all of your life choices that led you here.

you know this dosen't make the gameplay fun but it makes it understandable, i'm still not going to buy the game but I will apreciate from a distance so, thank you, for making me apreciate things on a new level.

This video didn't age well. They killed the core idea to be more user friendly.

watched this after the Beyond update, and wondered why the like/dislike numbers were hidden, as the general attitude about the game is pretty good at the moment. Then i looked at the date.

This is fascinating. I had a lot of the same thoughts while playing No Man's Sky, but couldn't articulate them as well as you did here. Thanks for making this!

does anyone know the name of the song at 10:00? I cant find it anywhere

man seeing him in person honestly works a lot better for a buch of reason but I will say I miss dat puppet purely because I hate to see a gimmick go

I love this review because it avoids all the typical talk of delays, PR overhypedness, and gamer fury. That said, I also think a lot of the language used in this review sort of implies the features of the game that Dan likes are purposeful in their design which, if you trust the accepted story behind the game's development, they weren't? I find that odd. Not bad...just odd.

Cool video! You prove that video games have a story even without cutscenes and exposition because the player creates the story while playing the game. it annoys me when people doesn't understand that. So thanks for understanding.

So, in the end, No Man's Sky is a simple metaphor for life. Brilliant, if you ignore all the dev issues.

Just to save you a very short Google, the specific song played at 9:53 is Dramamine by Modest Mouse. I know Dan literally just said that name, I just wasn't sure if it was _Dramamine, The Stars are Projectors_ or _It's A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About._

Thank you for making this video!

Finally got around to watching this. Completely agree and it's silly to me how many people comment spewing so much hate, and then criticize your view on the game. Liking a game is subjective. The fact that you, I, and many others found enjoyment in a flawed game doesn't make our views on it any less credible. What also makes this whole thing silly is that I'm more than willing to bet the majority of people spewing hate below are just riding the bandwagon, and never actually touched the game themselves. Keep up the great work!

It’s funny how, seven years later, despite all of the updates and new features, this theme is still there. Pulsing gently under the glitz and glam of space colony’s and pirate battles, the sense of not belonging is still present, pressing. You can meet other travelers, but they are simply illusions of a parallel world. You can populate a base full of “friends” but you corrupt and ruin the lives of everyone you touch. You are no longer alone- but you are never understood. You do not belong here, you don’t belong anywhere

I'm interested in NMS but it needs more work or a 10 buck pricetag to make me buy it.

I enjoyed the video and the points Dan made and I think a lot of the commentators either don't understand that he was able to enjoy the game and parse out this perspective despite its faults (in the same way that we have our guilty pleasures or 'bad movies') or don't care and feel that anyone enjoying No Man's Sky- even with acknowledging its clusterfuck of a production and its lackluster design- is a betrayal of integrity/ethics itself and advocating for Hello Games or their bad practices. (Which is obviously false) However, here's my perspective: when the first videos came out, showing the expansive scope and potential of this game, the expectation I had was that this was a game that would allow you to have a million adventures in a similar manner to 'Breath of the Wild': you wander around for a bit, looking for something to do or just decide to chat up an NPC and before you know it you're sledding down an icy slope with seal like creatures wearing an impractical pink dress. Except this time, there would be *so much* content that unlike 'Breath of the Wild', you could potentially keep doing this _forever_. Every play session would be like an episode of Cowboy Bebop or Space Dandy and everyone at the water cooler would have their own fanfiction-worthy series of stories to tell. Instead what actually came out was something that was empty and only now are they trying to patch it up, after the game has been released and demanded $60 for something that was just...unfinished and unengaging. Not just that everything was repetitive or its tendency to crash but that none of that isolation or mundanity actually made a deliberate point the way 'Gone Home' or 'Firewatch' did. NMS was empty because it was unpolished and rushed, the product of what can be best described as 'A Series of Everything Wrong With the Videogame Industry and its Customers'. I personally want to believe that this game is a middle finger to all of us for all the selfish toxicity we spewed over a bad marketing campaign about a few lines of code. That we deserve this empty and unfun experience on some level. But I know that narrative isn't true and that even if I were to like the game from that mindset it would still be a narrative I imposed over the game regardless of what actually happened and how bad it actually is. And the thing is...there's nothing wrong with either of those things. You really can impose whatever you want about this game. And as long as no one is actually hurt in the process and you even manage to take enjoyment from a product that shouldn't be enjoyed? Then I think that's fantastic. Because you've taken a trainwreck and made a sculpture out of it, even if you're the only person who likes it.

Hm, this is probably the only instance where I find myself disagreeing pretty strongly with your observations on this game. When the game came out, I was totally on board with the game and its "Stranger in a strange land" vibe; its quiet exploration for its own sake, but the moment I applied any pressure onto its mechanics cracks began to appear and bad design choice after bad design choice started pouring out. My opinion falls more in the realm of Campster or Noah's, though where they ultimately came out positive on the game I found myself endlessly frustrated by its many, many issues, to the point where all I can see in it now is a seemingly endless parade of cack-handed and unfocused design decisions. As far as theming is concerned, the game as a whole seemingly lacks the confidence to fully commit to it, and after a while I start asking myself questions of whether they went with it on the outset and got sidetracked with semi-relevant to wholly irrelevant mechanics and lost focus, or if they just made whatever and applied those themes on top of it because they "fit" the most... Ah... An example might be life support. The observations you make about it are cute, but did the game really need, like, 5 different versions of it, plus shields for each one of those, plus the main shields, to convey that feeling? You go on to underline the tedium of maintaining them as intended and I really start scratching my head here, because even if I were to assume that the developers were keen and confident enough to attempt this it's... It's fantasy is nonexistent. I'm just pressing a couple buttons every 5-10 minutes to refill a bar -- in The Sims, when my Sim goes to take a shower, they take a shower. It occupies time and space and ... you get my point. I could go on and on about every problem I have with NMS, big and small, but I'll at least spare you from that -- really, this is just an opportunity for me to vent my frustrations with the game. It's certainly the game I feel the most passionate about this year, I just wish those feelings were positive.

this video and a warrior cat map is what got me into Modest Mouse.

This reminds me a bit of the general multiplayer conceit in Dark Souls, Death Stranding, even Spore. You might find traces of what others have lived, but it's only enough to wonder, never to know.

No mans sky is a strange game. I certainly cant say I like it, but I can say I think it had merits. Wether or not the game they shipped was the game they really wanted to make from the beginning is hard to tell, especially considering how much the game has changed and how jazzed about the changes Hello Games is. But I think this game really did capture a feeling of being a "lonely foreigner" very well and if anything, it deserves a spiritual successor who focuses in on that vision and makes something equally as unique but with perhaps fewer bugs and misleading trailers.

I don't agree with most of what you said, and eveyone is entitled to their own opinions of course. But I like how you thought Modest Mouse fit the game well. I do agree with that. Very interesting thought.

Waaaa another great video, now made obsolete: gamers CAN change the nature of the universe in No Man's Sky, with their whining, & with their wallets. Their entitlement: no, you CAN make a home here, you CAN exist, there IS a point to this. They made the universe boring & shitty because that's what they were used to. Like the Minecraft video you did: another accidental metaphor. I'm so glad I got to play the game near its launch, when it was still janky & honest & perfectly nailed its intended purpose. Gamers can fight over the carcass all they like; it was a beautiful experience, & its impermanence only makes it moreso. Great video.

I don't think you're wrong at all, and there is definitely good reason to value those aspects of the game. The only issue I have is whether the game does the things you ascribe to it well, or whether it sort of stumbles into them in spite of itself. The survival mechanics are banal enough that they immediately become a chore instead of a mechanic to be afraid of, so they definitely add a sense of routine to everything you do. At the same time, you're stopping for constant periods of time in order to mine and gather the materials you need to make it work, all the while either dodging or fighting the ever present Sentinels. It makes the whole thing feel like you're a homeless person trying to find a place to sleep on an infinite lawn with "keep off the grass" signs posted every 10 feet. The sense of conflict is somewhat jarring when you're essentially being attacked because you were brushing your teeth. The player character is definitely considered an outsider among the aliens, but then you run full into the issue that you're an outsider in name only because at no point does it matter that you're an outsider. You will never be arrested or get into a fight for breaking a rule you didn't know existed. Sometimes you'll choose the wrong answer, give an alien the wrong thing, and they just sigh and turn away and that's that. You can stroll up to anyone's ship and just offer them piles of money for it without even being able to speak their language at all. You're told by the only two unique NPCs in the game that the entire thing is a simulation, which then means that you're not an outsider because there is no inside for you to become part of. It feels like a poorly thought out joke because meta things are important, man. It felt like they made a narrative early on about driving home the loneliness and routine of being a traveler just passing through forever, but then decided there wasn't enough game and tried to make a compromise, so what they ended up with was a game that was just kind of a mess instead.

If no man's sky wasn't so expensive I think I would have bought it to unwind after a busy day. It's like walking through a desert. I never thought it was anything else to be honest. I think that's what I don't mind it so much.

Incidentally, I didn't love the game as much after they patched in all the gameplay.

Beautiful essay! The atmosphere the game creates is brilliant and it's why I play it everyday.

Dragon age is the only single player game series that I think really made me feel the humanity of the companions. I mean, if you want lovable characters and to feel like you have friends and aren’t a sad adult, play some dragon age! I hate that elder scrolls is more popular than the clearly better fantasy series 😿 (if you like rpgs and characters and whatnot)

i respect your opinion, but i will have to respectfully disagree. I played this game and it offers nothing, no bigger goal, no quest, no nothing. It does not create a feeling of accomplishment

All these people in the comments using words in latin to talk about a video game that didn't deliver on promised features really need to take a chill pill, it looks embarrassing.

Just two days ago I asked you about it in Twitch stream. And now you made a video about it. SO COOL! Also, sorry if I was a bit invasive with my question about angry manbaby reaction

How much did they pay you? Just kidding I can see why people like it. I mean I was going to buy it just to walk around in beautiful environments but then I found out that the graphics wasn't that good.

But it's not fun or interesting.

sweet point there, really good video. now lets scroll down and see all those nerds trying to fight your argument like that was the point of the video.

Thanks friend. You were able to put to words what I found so captivating about No Man's Sky.

I half-agree with Dan about the game being designed to invoke the feeling of loneliness. It's actually pretty evident from the system design, the artstyle and the score (oh my god, 65daysofstatic, I love you). It was never intended to be a fun-time space-thing to shoot stuff with your pals, and I am baffled, that the general public was mad that it wasn't that. However, that does not mean that the overall game design is not half-fumbled mess. The survival system is more of a nuisance than an immersion tool, the flying is mediocre at best, the trading is so plain, and there really aren't that much systems to interact with. The game does not offer much in terms of systems, and what it offers is surface-level and disjointed. And I don't think that it had to be in order to convey all the feelings Dan described in the video. However however, the general public's reaction to NMS is killing me. The game does not owe you to be "fun", whatever that means. No Man's Sky was supposed to be a niche project, but then people just blew it up in their own imagination and then were disappointed that it didn't meet that imaginary standard. And holy shit, stop saying it's a "scam". Yeah, I guess a small team of indie developers spent several years working their asses creating a game, the kind of which has never really been done before, overcoming mountains of creative and technical problems along the way... all of it just to get your money. Sure, sounds plausible. Again, I'm not saying the game is good, but it's not a "SCAM". It's a project, which was way too ambitious, tackled by a team, which was way too small. Last point: it's hugely disappointing to see the current direction of a game. The updates for it released during the last year indicate, that the game is just becoming a generic "fun-time space-thing to shoot stuff with your pals". I would rather the game fix its problems to make the gameplay more engaging, while still being faithful to its original premise: a game about loneliness and nomadism in an incomprehensibly large universe.

Love the lonely My main complaint is that there's always ships flying over gets rid of some lonely

There's a very interesting opposing view presented by RU-vid channel Joseph Anderson. It's more about the technical side, but anybody might want to take it in.

The recent updates showed that the emptiness of the game was not on purpose but that they just fucked up. I mean it's possible to accidentally create a master piece by dropping paint on the floor. But in this case I think No Man's sky wasn't empty ENOUGH. All these pre existing buildings, all the aliens space stations... they ruin the emptiness. If not every planet had structures and not every system had space station then encountering would feel special and left you lonely otherwise. But so it's just obviously bad design.

Thanks for this vídeo man. Almost 200 hours in game and never thinked about that... now, i have a new perspective about it. Thanks.

retitle it, space is big, not a lot to do: no shit sherlock.

Curious, do you still play and if so what do you think of the games evolution?

It's been 3 years and this is the video that got me started playing so many years ago. NMS has changed so much and yet the the feeling is still the same. I'm alwayus finding something new, always traveling, always alone in the stars.

This was deeply beautiful. I'd like to spend some time in that place.

I’d love to know the bands or songs that you mention or makes reference to towards the end of the video.. does anyone know who they are..? Thanks in advance :)

From what I've played, The Flame In The Flood has a lot of similar themes and mechanics going for it. Your raft is the closest thing to a home, your dog the closest thing to a friend, everyone you meet is half-mad. Scattered quilts each tell a strange disjointed fragment of some larger story never to be completed. Scavenging is the only way to survive so you have to be constantly mobile, always drifting down the river towards... something. Maybe. Aside from the conceptual multiplayer and entirely mundane survival tasks, it's right on the money.

I liked No Man's Sky, I couldn't put my finger on what exactly and I think you bring up that point very eloquently. I feel the urge to press on, try to leave the monotony of the previous life (planet) and search for meaning somewhere else. I like this melancholy loneliness.

In 40 years Star Citizen will be what No Man's Sky is now.

Dammit, Olson (Olsen? Old son?) Now I need to re-listen to my Modest Mouse discography. I recently stumbled upon your channel (via twitter/ Lindsey Ellis) and have thoroughly enjoyed your philosophical musings. I haven't yet seen someone defending this game, and I always wanted to give it a chance, but there's always the hesitation there--will I enjoy it? Will I find meaning in it when so many have written it off? So much of games culture is focused on the idea of completion, accomplishment, and this video reminds me that games aren't always about doing the thing as it is about experiencing the thing. It was when you mentioned Modest Mouse that it all really clicked. That a game could give me the same feeling as the Lonesome Crowded West would be and experience worthy of my time. I haven't played the game. This video, standing against the larger culture of games media and culture saying "It's a game where you don't do anything" and therefore not worth the experience, is a bold statement. Thank you for putting your flag out there, and as one fellow traveler to another, for signaling something worth the investment.

It wants you to feel bored.

I keep watching this and it makes me the good sad every time.