When I was like 7-9 I went on a “camping” trip with my football/soccer team.

Really, we were just putting up tents on the field we usually practiced at after some very tame river rafting.

It was the first time I was away from my parents. And I was inconsolable. I cried most of the night. To the point the supervisors offered to call my parents so I could talk to them. (And mobile phoning someone back then was not cheap),

In the end I just cried myself empty.

Because I was asleep so late, I slept into the morning and my “tent mates” pulled down the tent around me while I was sleeping.

So I woke up in drizzling rain, lying in my sleeping bag on a thin plastic sheet with no tent around me. While all my “friends” were in the club house having breakfast.

I did not stay in the soccer club long after that.

Alternatively, it turns out the noblewoman who has hired the adventuring party for a string of missions is effectively destitute and extremely in debt.

Neither able to pay the adventurers nor pay her outstanding credit debt toward several influential and unscrupulous banking houses who have thrown some gold together to pay a mercenary troop to collect the gold from her or alternatively take natural goods (speak plundering her holdings).

Now, with a small mercenary army bearing down on the pastoral villages and crumbling castle, what will the party do?

A former foot soldier in the crusades who had a panicked war horse fall on his legs in a skirmish somewhere on the way to Antioch and was left behind in Bulgaria by a retreating supply train on his way back.

His shattered leg never healed well and he is in constant pain he has mostly learned to live with, does not speak the language and is edging out a small existence as a gravedigger in a bigger city, dragging his twisted limb through rain-soaked earth, muttering prayers in a foreign dialect to saints no one there worships.

Somewhere between Neutral Good and Neutral Bitter, depending on the day.

I know it is a bit hammy.

Opening a tavern after retiring from adventuring is so out of fashion.

I’d open a prank/novelty/gag store and sell little wooden thumbs to the unthumbed.

I’d also sell middle fingers but only to bards.

First experiment: pressing women into being scientists.

Success.

Second experiment: pressing scientists into women.

Failure. Called eugenicist, chased by pitchforks.

Curious. Same ingredients, different reaction. Something’s missing… maybe it’s pantsuits.

Why even bother with shouting if you have CHIM, just open the command line and put in tcl and tgm and no-clip out of there.

Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate your candor.

I wish you would have actually said anything about the game. I know that you enjoyed it. 45$ worth, at least.

You are blown away and find it breathtaking, but I am not really sure why that is.

Asking people what they like about a piece of media is not “letting internet strangers form your opinion”.

I was asking because I am wondering where the game’s strengths lie and what it does exceptionally well. Because then I could compare that to what I value most in a space game. And could decide if I give the free fly a try or spend my time on any of the other infinity+1 amounts of things to indulge in. (Which is right now emulating Bloodborne and playing Clair Obscure)

Elite Dangerous, X4, EVE or any other high-depth simulators never totally clicked with me. But I have spent considerable hours in Star Sector or the Starpoint Gemini games. Games that make me feel like I am a space cowboy without throwing me infinite possibilities with no reason to pursue any of them. Which is often the feeling No Man’s Sky is giving me.

If I had to sum it up, I’d say I am more interested in Space RPGs than Space Simulators.

Maybe you could have shared what is actually sensational about the game. Which would probably have done more to counter any unfair criticism towards it, than just expounding on how unfounded preconceived opinions about it are. After all you love the game. So let some of that love shine through and carry the day.

I should have chucked the lines about budget and time, because they raised your hackles so much. You are probably used to the game being attacked on that avenue.

Maybe it is top of the pack in the genre; but by how much?

For how absolutely out of any reasonable dimension their budget and development timeframe is, what have they to show for it, that you cannot get from X4 or Elite: Dangerous or any Starship Traders or any similar game? I cannot imagine it doing every single appeal of those games better.

Honest question, as I do not like the super deeply simulated games anyway. I like my space sims at least 30% arcade-y and easy to pick up.