Deeper Horizons: A Comprehensive Re-Review of No Man's Sky NEXT [Total Spoilers]
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- Опубліковано 15 сер 2018
- [TOTAL SPOILERS] This is an in-depth review and critique of No Man's Sky NEXT, looking at all the updates and changed content since its launch in 2016. It cover Pathfinder, Foundation, Atlas Rises and NEXT. The experience of No Man's Sky is much different than it originally was-- this video takes an hour to try and put a finger on how and why. It discusses and shows footage from all parts of the various plot threads, including endgame content and deep lore.
====IF YOU LIKED THIS VIDEO====
I've done two other videos on No Man's Sky:
--My original launch critique: • No Man's Sky In Close ...
--A Moody Blues mixtape using NMS footage: • Video
I've also got long videos about my year living nomadically, which I discuss a little here in this critique.
--An introduction to the idea: • Playtesting Adventure
--4,000 miles through the desert: • The Desert Bus (A Sout...
--4,000 miles through the midwest: • The Other Half of the ...
======
If you enjoyed this video and want to contribute to the production of others like it, please consider supporting me on Patreon!
/ noahcaldwellgervais - Ігри
![No Man's Sky In Close Critique [Deep Spoilers]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DA21NUasw5A/mqdefault.jpg)
![No Man's Sky In Close Critique [Deep Spoilers]](/img/tr.png)
![Elements of CONTROL [Spoilers]](/img/n.gif)
"Weird and broken. 10/10"
- Noah Caldwell-Gervais
GavinHohenheim Sounds like my online dating profile bio.
"Bitches ain't nothin' but hoes and tricks" - Noah Caldwell-Gervais, probably
A clear LOL moment
I like Noah a lot but this critique was kind of...delusional. I was only vaguely aware of the controversy at the time of release, so this sentiment isn't rooted in that sort of bias...but I feel like the backlash-to-the-backlash to No Man's Sky has gone way too far.
Purchased it recently and I'm really struggling to appreciate it. Even Noah's review didn't help, and he's usually so good at finding ways to appreciate games.
@@bens5859 you're just too dumb to appreciate one of the best games ever made
"Existence is beautiful, if you let it be. Life is not a question, there does not need to be an answer."
42
I didn't know that Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang wrote for Hello Games
@@SteveAkaDarktimesof the Omi alliance?
Noah is one of the few channels I get excited about seeing an upload from. It’s like a podcast I can listen to while playing a game
+1 subscriber, bitch
Same. His uploads are high-quality, and infrequent enough to make each one seem like an unexpected treat.
and he's mostly positive about games, which is rare
That's exactly what I'm doing now. Got the music turned to 0 and the sound halved so I can listen while playing Graveyard Keeper. :D
Fuck it, I'll check it out. I collect you content creators like fucking baseball cards at this point.
"Ain't nothin an egg got ta whisper to ya that you're gunna wanna hear."
"Come ovah here ya little bastards!!"
This guy has read Berserk.
1:07:29
@@doomyman108absolute king
Man, I love how in-depth this channel is with everything, it’s nice
I like when people consume video game medium the way people used to consume sculptures and paintings in art galleries. Video games are often not just mindless entertainment.
and like art, you can interpret more than it is
When NMS was announced, I remember saying that it'll never live up to it's hype and it'll be pretty crappy. The initial release proved me right. I dusted my hands off and went, ahh modern gaming for you can't fulfill half the promises they made! Watching this and the Internet Historian's video on it made me see the game very differently. Just a small studio, over the moon that their game was being hyped on such a huge level. They were in way over their heads. I've got to give them credit. Since launch they just kept their heads down and worked to deliver the experience they promised and more on top of that. Fair play to them, I'm even interested in it now.
I've kept an eye on it since launch. Word of mouth and this video convinced me to grab it during a sale window. I'm not disappointed, but I'm not playing it as much as I though I'd be. I know I'll get there, and I have time. I came back to this video to compel me to put down Katamari Forever.
The fact that you think that your consumerist speculation about the hype surrounding a game is significant is honestly pathetic.
@@ldskjfhslkjdhflkjdhf the comment basically just says “I came in with a negative mindset and read opinions I agreed with. Now that I have heard internet talking men say good things, I like it now. “ I hate how people can’t think for themselves anymore.
Real fans skip to the end to see what he's wearing
No, that`s just weird
that blue flannel shirt is a fit for the ages. Really high ranked on the wiki
Fit check 1:13:14
This review is EXCELLENT. FASCINATING to see No Man's Sky having become a mythical meta meditation on the nature of procedurally generated life, and by extension life itself. A uniquelly video game work of art.
"The Corvax call it a prayer to the Atlas. It's actually the equivalent of that guy who made a functional simulacrum of a 16-bit processor inside of Minecraft."
This is now my favorite analogy ever. Thank you for this blessing.
"Hey fellas, this fishbird only got one hole for all its business!"
"Existence is beautiful, if you let it be. Life is not a question, there does not need to be an answer."
words might straight up change my life
"A Yes album cover to drift endlessly down into" - excellent and concise formulation. :) NMS brings Roger Dean to life
You are a master of low budget but charming as fuck video commentary. Keep up the good work
I love that you brought up the three Travellers in the Atlas Rises story arc. Not only are the three Travellers the three kinds of gamers that reflect upon NMS but also they're the three reactions you can give the Atlas. Artemis - Despair, Apollo - Embrace, -null- - Defiance.
What's curious is how they all start out and how their arcs began and how they end. Artemis is curious and jovial but at the end falls apart even if you save them. -null- starts out speaking with certainty and authority to you then in the end is filled with with uncertainty and anger on your quest to the center. Apollo starts out as cold and rather indignant but in the end becomes happy, content and remarks with eagerness that he will race you to the center. Apollo unlike the others starts as a slave to his own process and upon learning that things only matter to oneself is now free.
They are three individuals that face existentialism in three flavors. Artemis falls to Nihilism, nothing has purpose or meaning. -null- is the Atheistic Existentialism, nothing has purpose or meaning but I can form a purpose and meaning from nothing. And Apollo is the Absurdist, one can never know if something does or does not have value, maybe one can craft meaning from nothing but it will only ever have meaning to oneself never to the universe.
"Hey, fellas, this fish bird only got one hole for all it's business! Anybody seen shit like this before?" -George Shaw, Naturalist's Miscellany, 1799
No Man's Sky frustrates the hell out of me, because everything you're talking about in this video is extremely the kinds of things I love in games, except I'm expected to sit there holding m1 on rocks and F on flora and fauna for dozens of hours to earn it. I played Next up to warping to a second star system and I'm not sure I have the endurance to continue with how slow it feels, especially when the upgrades I'm seeing are tools with features like "+8% mining speed" that cost every penny I've got.
Jetsetlemming Find a podcast, some documentaries, or, hell, some audiobooks. Let the words flow over you as you harvest. This is how I got to level 70 in WoW before the third expansion came out.
The beginning is slow
And the game will never change. Everything is hidden behind painful grinding. For example, every single time you wanna take a vehicle to another planet, you have to buy an expensive vehicles spawner first. You'll never feel like you actually 'own' a vehicle that you can take everywhere.
NMS is a horrible mix of eternal grind and inventory management.
It's not a game for the instant gratification crowd. People have some pretty wierd expectations of brevity and efficacy for a game that basically wants you to explore a galaxy. It's supposed to be a grind. If it wasn't, it would be terrible front loaded nonsense, and a waste of a procedurally generated space so vast.
leadbones There's a difference between "instant gratification" and "I want to be doing something that isn't starring at a thing holding down a button". I didn't mind how long it took me to get a warp drive and get to another galaxy, didn't mind the travel time, etc. But I definitely minded how high a percentage of that time was spent staring at a slowly filling meter, not even allowed to divert my attention because of overheating and sentinels.
I played a whole lot of Spore as a kid. I was too young to have known about all of the hype and subsequent backlash, but with hindsignt, it reminds me of No Man's Sky a lot. Even the art-style is a little similar.
I am here two years later to tell you that Hello games is indeed continuing.
And still going strong
You put into words exactly what I feel about No Man's Sky. It's a beautiful experience that made me think a lot about life, discovery and the universe. Every time I think about this game it makes me smile, I love to get back on it from time to time. Thank you for the two videos you made about it
Thank you for your work and thinking with this channel. These video essays are one of the high points of this platform for me.
Amazing video so far.
Also, the Heart of the Sun: It might be a Pink Floyd reference actually? "Set The Controls for the heart of the sun" is a long psychedelic space rock track from their second album, and the lyrics in it go like "the heart of the sun... the heart of the sun... the heart of the sun..." at one point.
my favorites from that album are "Corporal Clegg" (surprisingly fun to play on guitar) and "Remember a Day" (incredibly powerful and emotional) They were able to emulate Syd Barrett pretty good, still he is/was surely missed. "Astronomy Domine" remains to me one of the top 3 rock songs out there, the guitar work in it is out of this world and the production is spectacular, specially for 67 (fuck Sgt Peppers overhyped piece of garbage) (and fuck David Gilmour for turning into a sterile "daddy rock" representative)
I've noticed ''I wear sunglasses at night'' reference somewhere in video
You consistently give a very unique and interesting view of the games you write about, great video!
"weird and broken, 10/10"
sounds pretty accurate if you ask me
This has been amazing. A review that made me experience a game I really don't think I'll ever play, cementing in me a respect for it I never expected to have
thanks
In the first 5 minutes of the video he shows more interesting-looking planets than I ever got during my 40 hours of gameplay.
Mclawliet He did go all the damn way and reset the universe.
Four years after you put this video out, and you just sold me on No Man's Sky.
I know I'm just repeating what everyone else says, but I too want to say: I really like your videos. They're in-depth and personal at the same time, and really take advantage of the long form, in a way podcasts usually don't.
Thank you.
I've never had a positive review of a game do a better job of convincing me not to buy it.
Two full-length videos in a span of two weeks? You patronize us, sir! In any case I take it that means things are going well on your end and I wish you best of luck. Would totally donate on Patreon if I could but I can't yet.
Up until the last ten minutes I was edging to argue that the flimsily generated repetitive environments of NMS just lacked enough aesthetic quality to feel immersive but your closing comment on the introspective discovery of "what one would do with infinity" really hit a note in me. I'll pick it up again, try to slow down, really listen to what the game has to tell me (or me to myself through it). Cheers!
I think what's so radical about the game is it is truly open--even in the meaning of its discoveries. It's a hard thing to get used to when there's so much prescribed purpose in games. But yeah, when you slow down and just ask "does this mean something to me? Isn't that enough?" then the game clicks.
Always stoked to see notifications from you ma dude!
Thanks for this thoughtful and insightful review not just of No Man's Sky, but of video game culture writ large. I find a lot of marketing and mainstream games journalism incredibly narrow and reductive, evaluating games as commercial products alone and pretending we can "objectively" determine their quality (based on cultural assumptions about what games are for and who they are for). This sort of policing seems like such a failure of imagination. So I appreciate your attempt to broaden/deepen our horizons. Bravo!
2022 and they're currently teasing another update on twitter. Game continues to be amazingly impressive and a wonderful universe to disappear into for hours.
Great way to start my weekend! Love these videos!!!!
I pretty much only bothered to drop in another players game only once. He got me to follow him to his base which was a massive underwater hydroponics type base. He let me farm his base and get materials that I needed.
I was just random stranger who happened to drop in on his game. Cool guy.
NOAH MAN'S SKY
I never played before NEXT, but I absolutely love love love how meta the storyline is now. I've never played anything quite like it.
I appreciate you more with every vid I watch, thanks so much for this
Shammy: “How does this work? Oh, wait, it doesn’t.”
Joseph Anderson: “What is this _trying_ to do, and does it succeed? Oh, no, it doesn’t.”
Noah: “Why _the fuck_ does this mean something to me? No, I’m serious, it does.”
Dude this cracked me up
Some really funny lines in this one. The fish-bird with one hole to do all its business got me. I like how you talked about making meaning for yourself in such a journey, and yet thanks to the new additions, there are multiple meanings to find depending on the player. Some nice asides to the idea of successful games that don't fit into a pigeonhole experience, and comparisons to your own VW bus travels. Another wonderful video Noah. Thanks :)
Just wanted to say, amazing videos man. They really lighten up my day!
Wisdom is knowing I am nothing
Love is knowing I am everything
And between the two my life moves
One of the most insightful and though provoking videos I have seen, and I have never even played no mans sky
So glad you made this. Going in my favorites and I haven’t even watched it all yet
That makes no sense though :P
1:14:08
Noah I know you’re reading this out loud
-NCG
I accidentally right-clicked while looking at the stats of the free frigate on offer and quit out of the menu, then the dialogue bugged and I couldn't accept it ever again. I guess I'll have to scrounge up 10M+ credits. Oh well.
New Game Dungeon and new Noah make me a happy lad.
Now we just need some Joseph Anderson.
I start to think Joseph do rather streams than videos. Well, we'll see. He moved recently
Wow surprise seeing Joseph and Ross fans here
Haven't I seen you on Aegon of Astora videos too?
Haha wow funny to see people having the same intersections of interests, even if it probably isn't that suprising. Ross and Anderson are my favorite youtubers, and I just found this guy. If you like those folks, I'd highly recommend Ahoy as a channel as well. His video production is god-tier.
Listening to Noah talk about everything he had to do to get the game to run again reminds me why I dont fuck with PC gaming anymore
Excelent review.
A couple friends and I dropped acid and ended up talking about No Man's Sky and the whole Life's purpose being to witness all god created andnthe secondary purpose being creation and destruction so materials can be moved about.... and decided as a piece of art, the game is an astounding masterpiece. The ultimate satire.
So glad Noah's re-reviewing this. No that I'm looking for some gushing over the new updates but it's really good to hear his thoughts on what changed (good and bad, more game is not necessarily good and has created more complexity and tedium too)
I really love your videos. I don't really have much else to say besides that I look forward towards your videos. Thanks for the content Noah.
Just about to sit down with this, thinking about how much I've been hoping to see what your thoughts are. So excited.
Top tier review as always. Thank you for making these!
I’ve been waiting for something like this from one of my subscriptions!!! Like checking everyday haha :) thank you!! I’m looking forward to watching!
Papa Noah delivers again
A real thinker
literally screamed when i saw this in my sub box - i adore all your videos noah
Check out The Outer Wilds. It's the opposite of NMS: only one solar system to explore, but the exploration is much deeper.
Excellent review, you nailed it. I've also loved NMS since launch despite its quirks. Curious though, what were some of your favorite sci-fi paperbacks that you referenced in the video?
Roger Zelazny for sure, he's got a really great sense of style and place and very little regard for logical coherency. This book of short stories has a lot of ones that would feel at home in the terminals of the game: www.amazon.com/Doors-His-Face-Lamps-Mouth/dp/0743413296
Harry Harrison some, with his Homeworld and Deathworld stuff, but also Bill the Galctic Hero for its willingness to be very upfront and grinning with its metaphors.
Clifford D. Simak had a particular talent for the vibe as well.
Plenty more, No Man's Sky is influenced by a whole lot of things, but that era had an approach that's just extremely opposite of gritty, hard science stuff. It's a lot of why Guardians of the Galaxy borrows that era's music, it's part of a whole aesthetic mood.
The context provided in THIS video has helped me enjoy this game 10x more than I believe I would have otherwise. I would not have found or understood half of what is explained here, and it's amazing. (new player with the launch of NEXT)
That ending speech gave me goosebumps but left me with a giant smile on my face. Thankyou.
The contemplation on the nature of travel rang very true for me. I spent my honeymoon hiking the Appalachian Trail with my partner, and something we noticed was the way in which many people fall into comparison with everyone else in terms of pack weight, miles per day, sensibility of shoes, going too fast to appreciate nature, going too slow to keep up with friends, it goes on and on. People wound up in these endless recursive loops of using something as infinite as nature to represent something individualized about themselves. Very sad. I also note: This is really only something that happens after the travelling, or within internet spaces of people speculating on what it would be like. I suppose travelling is an art then, in the sense that you can only learn by doing.
54:17"That's right Morty! The Mega Trees! With the Mega Fruit on them!"
Speaking of weird sci-fi controversies, fingers crossed on that Wolfenstein 2 analysis
Great video Noah! How much of this experience is possible on creative mode? I keep trying to engage with the game but just can't handle the the resource grind.
I don't think you're given the story quests on creative mode because of differences in how the inventory works. But you can warp anywhere for free and build anything. It's a "compromise" mode more than a full creative, but I also spent like half an hour with it because I was invested in my primary save file.
Noah Caldwell-Gervais Thanks.
"I use arrow keys to move" - I am super confused/intrigued by this now - what are your other key bindings that means this works for you?
'WASD'?
almost 2 years later, nms is still missing misadventures. it's probably one of the few aspects of the game that still need some love.
There are pretty spooky derelict freighters drifting in space that you can find and loot now. They're well worth it and just DRIP with atmosphere (sometimes literally).
@@GojiraTX what kind of creatures can you find inside them?
The more I hear the more excited I get to buy the game. I'm definitely an Apollo player and I have yet to really find a good game where that sticks as well as a good story to keep me interested.
Incredible work. When I get a PC that can run this, I'll definitely play it.
Thank you Noah. I think you are the best game analyst in this platform, and it is because of you I've discovered games that look like they've been made for me to like them. You deserve more attention.
This was likely your best video yet. Well done! And thanks for sharing.
I agree. I've never played No Man's Sky and don't intend to, but his narration was so well structured, had so good a pace, and valuable explanations with meaning to the different sections, that you get so captivated that it could pass as one of those travel books he so thoroughly enjoys himself.
I just want to take a moment and say I love your reviews man.
Its kinda sad when you feel like a new video from Noah really MADE your friday..but it did. SO gonna watch this when i get home from work.
Ain't nothin' an eggs gunna whisper to you that you're gunna want to hear.
I am incredibly into the idea of a 30's New York reporter getting the latest scoop on a platypus
I didn't go into this expecting a discussion on the handling of the existential revelation of nihilism, but you're definitely one of the people to best get it from.
For me a dirt path into the woods is just a bunch of fucking trees, but I love exploring in games.. I’ve never been very outdoorsey
Best NEXT analysts and overall NMS analysis I've seen
Another fantastic video by Noah. The new features sound great. What I wouldn't give to have this game in VR.
Another awesome video :)
Ive actually been wanting to play this game for a while. I heard a couple bad reviews about it but tbh I just wanted to explore and experience the nomadism this game excels at. Hopefully this game becomes a PS Plus game soon but even if it doesnt your review has inspired me to get it regardless. Love your content. Keep it up!
Very happy you made this video. I haven’t played it yet
I was among the few who were happy with No Man's Sky when it was released. I kinda want to play it again but all these updates seem a little overwhelming.
Your mind resonates like mine, it's uncanny. "It can't all be great and needs a balance" is something I've written 12 years ago when examining the MMORPG genre. Thanks for making this video because I'm sure as hell not as eloquent. You captured NMS beautifully. A hard game to "get". It's more of an experience, whatever that means for someone. It can be so different. Boring, fun, frustrating, exciting, calm, tense but ultimately something private that creates stories to share with friends. This is what gaming means for me. The more someone has the same experience aka story games, the more boring it gets.
What do you mean when you say that black holes stopped working? That flying thru them didn’t take you anywhere? I don’t understand.
The Know and IGN should take note. THIS is a fair, indepth and considered review of this unique and fascinating "game". Thanks Noah!
one of my favorite essays of all time on one of the most deeply existential interactive experiences (in pop culture at least).
interesting to revisit in the context of starfield just coming out. i'm still undecided if starfield is saying something interesting with its own brand of existentially self-aware narrative and mechanics. I wish I could devote more of my (very limited) mental energy and time on pondering these things to the degree that Noah does.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the more recent aspects. NMS is one of these games I love to hear about, even though I don’t really play myself.
Fucking Christ I could listen to these for hours on repeat and never get tired. My good sir you have the delivery and tone or a true narrator.
watching this after playing Starfield, it's wild how that game took a very similar approach of mythologizing the different playstyles in the narrative to basically tell the player what to do in a big and uncaring universe
This has sold me on reinstalling No Man’s Sky. I enjoyed it at launch as well, but found it ultimately hollow. These updates sound like a good reason to come back.
Also, those misadventures could occur in the at launch game. I remember the first and only time I landed on a Death World, filled with predatory, hostile life. I barely got out alive. Probably the only time I’ve actually know what it felt like to be a Colonial Marine :P
you use the arrow keys to move?
Yes! I was hoping Noah would revisit NMS for next.
Excellent review/video essay. Although I was wondering where you got the idea that you can only own 16 bases at a time. Was this something you tested and found or did you read this somewhere? Personally I've only ever read that you can have an unlimited number of bases, but obviously I haven't tested that yet.
Glad to see you revisit this Noah! Was excited when I saw you saying you would, as you hit the nail on the head of why I also enjoyed the game at launch. Much like yourself, I'm more of an avid nomad, so No Man's Sky just resonates with me on a really great level.
However, as time's gone on (I've been playing the game off & on since release, tinkering about with modding it more than playing at times), I've found the one part that you very aptly describe as "tedious crafting" wearing on me more and more. It makes me sort of hopeful that maybe, somewhen, Hello Games will work on an Adventure Mode between Creative & the three other modes, which are essentially difficulty levels for Survival Mode, that unburdens players from the crafting in favor of a scavenging, stealing/pirating, buying sort of play style.
That said, I tend to disagree with the understandable but still sort of strange assessment of purposelessness in a solitary existence. You mention this in discussing what to do with Artemis, and to me, multiplayer isn't really the only out for resolving that dilemma. One part of meaning absolutely comes from social relation, yet another part to this is the impact of action, of the unfolding strangeness of interacting conditional systems, in the form of AI set against each other and one's relation to those AI entities based on how one's behaved towards them.
It's this latter part that still feels severely underdeveloped with No Man's Sky, where fauna mostly ignore Sentinels, and Sentinels strangely ignore pirates and predators, and so there's still few of the mishaps, few of the biological horror moments to run into, like stumbling into a strange skirmish between Sentinels & pirates or predators. Players can fill in some of those gaps some of the time, sort of, but the real emergent moments that are the most thrilling so far have tended to come from the game itself, and one would hope they eventually build on this further with letting the AI fauna, alien, & robot systems conflict with each other a little more.
Your videos are gems. Thanks one more time.
I have seen so many reviews on No Man's Sky, and your review is the only one that actually makes me one to try the game out now. If they keep updating the game, I think it could be worth it, especially for a cheaper price as of now.
thanks so much for this I have been following this game for a while.
Beautiful, as always.
Great review
44:17 Is your base themed after Firewatch?