No Man’s Sky, a few suggestions

Another post on No Man’s Sky, possibly the last. 

Just some suggestions on how to improve the game. Not nitpicks or bug fixes or time-consuming complete overhauls, but impactful meaningful medium-sized updates with a good benefit-cost ratio.

First off, companions. The loneliness of the world really gets to you after a while, and it would help a lot to have an NPC as a trusted always-by-your-side companion. The optimum would be a human companion with some degree of personality and some lines of dialog and to whom you could give instructions (like having the him/her do some mining while you explore), but befriending and keeping animals as pets would be enough for starters. 

On a similar theme, making the planet buildings and space stations seem less dead, boring and lonely. That single alien just sitting there in that sterile lifeless environment is a depressing sight indeed. Compare that with taking a walk in the Citadel in Mass Effect, or visiting a settlement (even a small one) in Fallout, to get an idea of what I mean. Not that I’m suggesting they should aim for anything nearly that ambitious, just do something, anything, to breath a feeling a life into the world. 

And then there’s the spaceship, a really vital part of the experience. Think of Firefly. Make it a little easier to find a basic model you like, and then make it (more) customizable both in terms of looks and functionality. And make it possible to name. 

Create more lore and make it have some real substance rather than all that cryptic stuff that amounts to little more than trying to say “this is deep shit man” to the player. It was pretty interesting to follow the Atlas path while it lasted because the game managed to create some real expectations, but in the end those were not really met at all and instead, again, we got something that amounted to nearly nothing. 

And for the love of god, make it more meaningful and rewarding to reach the center(s). (Actually the whole model of having a bunch of different galaxies you unidirectionally travel through is flawed imo, but that’s a story for another day.)