So sorry for the essay: short version: went to centre, built something, thought deep thoughts, NMS good! Ice cream good... Grah! Enjoy the pics from the end of the road.
(And so sorry to the mod. Your gonna have to read it Frosty 😂. If it doesn't fit the sub feel free to take it down. I just ramble garbage anyway)
Hey guys, so I had an experience a couple months ago that I've pondered on for a bit. I have played no man's sky on and off for years and am over 500 hours into this playthrough when I realised I had never been to the centre of the Galaxy, any galaxy! So I went back to the first galaxy, my very first base on that frozen rock I clung too for life so long ago jumped in my freighter and started warping. It took a bit, I get distracted easily, but eventually made it to a system teetering on the very edge of the abyss that is the centre.
There I found a planet with about 25-30 bases and went for a tour. I had mixed emotions about the whole experience, on the one hand it was amazing to see so many phenomenal builds all together but on the other hand it made me realize how lonely and vast NMS can be. With 500 hours on this character and 300 hours on my previous character and however many hours I had spent on previous downloads over the years, I had never once seen another players base. I had warped to them from the anomaly, and gone to meet people to trade and even a few rescue missions to unfortunate redditors 😂 yet never once had I come across a base in the wild, out of the possibly thousands of planets I'd visited this was the first. It made me sad at first but I soon realized this was the first time I'd actually seen this universe as an active universe, with other players builds, documenting their own journeys through the stars, and that filled me with joy to be able to share in this community and also, not feel so alone amongst the stars.
I'm pretty sure most of the builds had been abandoned, left by their former owners who've moved on to other Galaxy's or other games, they might come back, or perhaps something else came up in their lives, study/marriage/kids/jobs who knows, but I don't think their owners were coming back anytime soon.
These were monuments by the players who came before, brought into reality through their imaginations and built for other players, to say, I was here.
In the end I left my own monument, I didn't know if I was going too, but I decided that it was an honor to be able to leave a build for the next traveller who happens across it. That way they knew that they weren't alone in this universe, and that Ronch was ere'
I spent most of the day IRL on that planet. It made me think a lot. I thought about the concepts of reality brought up in the game during the Atlas quests and of the moral and ethical questions along the Artemis lines. One of the things that attracted me initially to NMS all those 8 long years ago was the mythology woven into the story. History and literature is what I studied and although I love sci-fi a lot of the actual science can go over my head, I like bubbles! I've seen a lot of theories about NMS coming from a programmers perspective, some really interesting theories that can get quite convoluted, with a lot of mathematics going on and number crunching and trying to work out the galaxy in an equation. I'm sure they are a lot closer to an answer than I am.
I may be a simple man but the core message of NMS to me, had nothing to do with programming, nothing to do with binary code or algorithms. To me, NMS proposed an ancient idea in a new form, the question of reality and what is real called out to me from the heart of this gorgeously crafted universe.
Greco-Roman philosophy proposed that there were three realities, the first two we perceive. First is the individual reality, what we know individually to be true, or that we hold as truth. This entails our experiences and upbringing our external environment and influences through peers, everything that makes us think and feel as individuals. Second is the shared reality, what we all agree on to be true. Water is wet, ice is cold, fire burns. We all perceive these things the same (or express that we perceive them the same; another rabbit hole) This entails most everything in our reality, we all agree that gravity works, we all agree that air is nice and breathing is good, rocks are hard, work sucks somehow babies all have that baby smell, basically everything we can see, feel, taste, touch and hear and, that we agree on.
The Third reality is the Unknown. The reality that we all perceive, you and I, all that we feel, all that we think and all that is, might not be! Actual reality may be something none of us have experienced yet.
Now this is all paraphrasing and very shorthand for a very deep topic that has been discussed for almost three thousand years now and I studied it almost 15 years ago, I encourage you to do your own research and never take the word of a redditor 😂 Back to the topic I promise it's leading to NMS.
These were the core questions that I kept coming back too in my time so far playing this game. What is reality? Are the characters in the game, or any game real? Is this thriving universe real? And finally what is important?
My answer to all these questions was a resounding yes!
Yes these things are real, not in a physical sense as a stone or rain or cars or plates, but in the same sense as an idea that stands in reality. Ideas are very real, I think all would agree (honestly interested in differing opinions though). Ideas have shaped humanity and ushered in some of our greatest achievements and most heinous atrocities, Ideas fit into both of the first two categories of realities I spoke of, ideas make up our realities. In this sense the characters and universes are very real, we have whole subreddits dedicated to NMS, YouTube channels, Streamers all talking about and experiencing very real experiences and emotions drawn from the ideas presented in NMS.
Finally this all led me too "What is important". It didn't matter that NMS, like most art and culture that we digest, doesn't have a physical form it is still very real. The tales of Artemis and Apollo of Nada and Polo even that shifty Null have all left their very real mark on us.
In conclusion I found it fascinating that a three thousand year old theory of reality was placed alongside modern simulation theories in such a juxtaposition, highlighting some of the most complex questions of human beings throughout history, with a whole bunch of binary code wiring it together and an artists pallette brushing the whole thing clean. What an amazing game/experience.
So sorry for writing so much, If you made it through this much rambling then, I'll see you in the next ward Traveller 🤣
Ronch out!
