When I last left off I was standing on a hostile planet where I needed to keep maintaining my life support and my environmental protection systems by feeding them oxygen and sodium regularly.  I had been briefly off planet for an inter-system flight from the radioactive planet where I started to the blazing hot planet where I ended up.  So hot the landscape literally erupts in flames.  The place is a constant blaze.

Shit’s on fire, yo

So there I am, fresh from space on a hot planet where just staying alive seems to be a bit of a chore.

This is where the somewhat odd slant of the game comes in.  Or maybe it isn’t odd.  Maybe that is just me.  But it felt, in retrospect, that they wanted to put you in the mind of walking up hill, in the snow… or maybe in the fire… both ways to school every morning before introducing a little relief.  They want you to appreciate the good life once you get there I guess.

I say this because the next thing on my tutorial list was to build a base computer, and a base computer unlocks housing.

Base computer time

The chromatic metal was a bit of a chore… I had to find a copper deposit and there were none close by… but once I solved that I was set.

The base computer actually stakes a claim on the planet which you can then build on.  That keeps others from encroaching on your base.  Good fences make good neighbors or some such, right?

Setting that up kicks off  a series of things to do, the first of which is to choose a base building material.

Base opportunities await

For whatever reason I chose wood paneling… literally the least science fiction looking of the options… for reasons I cannot recall even though it was only a few days ago.  Probably impatience.  It wouldn’t be the first time I made a choice because I was interested in the next choice.  But on a planet that is constantly on fire, wood seemed like the least practical choice I could have made.  Fortunately, it appears to be some sort of synthetic wood simulation that is, among other things, fire resistant, so no worries on that front.

You get a snap-to building mechanic that is somewhat akin to Valheim, though the pieces are bigger.  You can slap together a decent sized shelter on a 2×3 floor grid.  It was a little wonky in that “the pieces move relative to you if you move while trying to place them, but not at the same rate you move” sort of way.  But getting six floor sections, walls, and two doors was easy.  Getting the roof on… that was a bit of a chore.  I had to stand way back from the structure to get the roof to snap into the right location.

But once the roof was on and I went inside, I discovered that all buildings are climate controlled.  The incessant heat was gone.  I could stop worrying about my environmental protections.

Then it was time to build things in the base.  There was a research station from which I could learn more building ideas or addition machinery.  The tutorial pushes you down the machinery path, so I ended up with a generator, some wiring, a save beacon, and a teleporter.

The teleporter is online in my wooden building

The teleporter was intriguing, though it wasn’t connected to anything, so I couldn’t go anyway.  It is like that when you have the first bit of tech.

More immediately useful was the save point beacon which answered the burning question “how do I save the game so I can log off?”  I mean, the game writes a save point every time you exit your ship, but I am not always right next to my ship and at this point in my journey I had not been informed I could simply summon my ship to me.  It is less of a ship and more of a companion, but I’ll get to more of that in a minute.  So you go to the save beacon and save.  Easy as that.

So I ended up with a set of amenities in my base building… though I haven’t bothered to build the signal booster yet.

All sorts of things from the catalog

In part that was because the tutorial path suddenly forgot about my base and was once again hot to trot on my ship.  I had to venture out again to find something.  Somewhere there was a blueprint waiting for me.

The hyperdrive blueprint dispenser

Having found that the game was very keen that I get that hyperdrive built, because how can you see the universe on 30 Altairian dollars a day if you can get to the next star system with your hyperdrive.

Hyperdrives are cool, everybody has one, you should too!

The first item on the build a hyperdrive checklist was to purchase a microprocessor… and there were not a lot of stores on my burning planet.  So I was sent to the space station, there being on in every system, galactic infrastructure being a very important aspect of the game.

Space stations

That means getting in your ship and taking off… which meant fueling the ship, as there is always something running out of resources.  I did that, then took off and pointed the ship… well… up.  That is where space is.  There is a marker to follow to get you there.

Space stations are, but definition, off planet I suppose

Once out of the atmosphere it started giving me time to destination estimates, which were not promising.

An hour? What is this, EVE Online?

However, the game tutorial prompted me to press and hold the space bar… everything is press AND hold around here… to engage the pulse engine, which made for a more comfortable travel time.

Now that is pod racing

Fortunately the pulse engine was fueled.  I was in space and didn’t have it fueled at a later point and was short on an item to make the fuel, so had to slow boat to a station.  Only 20 minutes, but 20 minutes of holding down the W key can be a trial… though I did get to kill three pirates along the way.

Anyway, first space station trip complete.

An hour, 5 seconds, 30 seconds, time is an illusion

The time estimate were done by the same person who did the Windows file copy time estimates.  They are entirely accurate based on the situation at that instant, even if they said something else five seconds ago.

On arrival I needed to land at/in/on the space station, which, much to my relief, just grabs you and lands you when you arrive within proximity of its landing bay.  As I approached I had visions of my run at Elite Dangerous, something else that is almost a decade back at this point, which ended in very short order due to my inability to dock/land in the newbie tutorial baby steps space station. (I understand that is better now, but if you read the comments on that post it is all about getting the right joystick with HOTAS controls and… that just wasn’t going to happen, then or now.)

There I found the marketplace interface… the galactic trade terminal which, giving lie to its name, is a only for local sales.  The market is different in each system.

Insert units to continue

I did not have enough units… the unit of currency is the unit… so had to scrounge around and sell stuff I had to hand, but eventually I got the microprocessor needed to fix the warp drive on my ship.

The game was also telling me to go see the exosuit technology merchant for an inventory upgrade for my exosuit.  But the merchant had no such thing when I spoke to him.

Where is my upgrade dude?

Those who have played the game are laughing at me even now I bet, as the merchant does not have the upgrade.  Rather, it is that blue glowing display taking up the right quarter of the image above.  But it didn’t say go look next to the merchant, so I am still a bit salty… also, I had to Google the answer even though it was right in front of me multiple times.

Upgrade found

That little upgrade is available in every space station every day, so now my suit has more pockets than a tinker’s bag.  I love inventory space.

I also talked to all the locals on the station, but that is a tale for another time I think.

Then, having picked up my groceries and expanded my inventory, the game told me to use the station teleporter to get back to my base… “warp” was the term used, which seemed odd, but whatever… so I found that, opposite the trade terminal.

Not a stargate, don’t start that

Then I realized I had left my ship parked in the docking area.  Well, I guess if I can just teleport back, then maybe all my spaceflight will be done from space stations going forward.  That could be a thing.

So through I went and was back at my base.  Then the game told me to go fix my ship and I was all “GAME! You just told me to leave my ship behind at the space station” and the game suggested that maybe they had considered that situation, because when I went outside I found my ship parked around the back, having followed me home like a puppy or something.

Oh, there it is… also, still hot on Yardo

I get that your ship just always being there is a huge benefit, but it felt like a moment of “we’re just not going to talk about it” as the game glided on, sending me off to the next chore.

Anyway, I fixed the warp drive.  I could now, theoretically at least, travel between star system.  Also, one more thing to keep fueled.  Later I end up on a planet being hounded by sentinels and, in jumping into my ship to make my get away I am informed that one system or another needs to be replenished, like the scenes of the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes back.

At this point, which is not that far into my journey because I’ve been writing about other things, Potshot read my post about No Man’s Sky, which he also bought on Steam back in a past age, and he decided to get it running as well.

So the next entry will be about us trying to play together.

So, you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

Record scratch, freeze frame, the usual trope…

I guess that situation, but also in the situation of owning this title at all.  Well, I am, even if you’re not.

I went back to check when I bought No Man’s Sky, just to get at least some sense of when I put in the 25 minutes of total play time I had before I downloaded it to try again last month.  I purchased the game in August of 2017 according to my purchase history, when it was on sale.

Honestly, my purchase history is practically fodder for a blog post on its own.  Several, really.  Let me put NMS into some purchase context.

Summer/Fall 2017 purchases

That is some history right there.  Three purchases for my daughter, one of which was returned because I suspect ARK didn’t run on her iMac.  That was before I built her a gaming PC.

RimWorld, which is my third most played title on Steam, with 311 hours, and the name in game pack, which I totally did not get because they rejected all my entries, Doom, Civ VI, and MiniMetro show up before NMS.  Those were all Summer Sale purchases… well, Doom seems too late for that, but figures in the post I have about the sale, so maybe?  The latter three have, in order, 91 minutes, 14.8 hours, and 8.4 hours played.  Not bad, really, in a world of so many purchased and unplayed titles.

On the far side, in the autumn, there is Medieval Engineers, Space Engineers, EVE Valkyrie, Grim Dawn, and Vietnam 65, which have 75 minutes, 78 minutes, 5.1 hours, 3.4 hours, and 18.1 hours played respectively.

Is this really my Steam catalog?  Do I actually play the games I buy?  I am as surprised as anybody by this revelation.

And in the middle of all of that was No Man’s Sky, with 25 minutes of play time.  I guess I had other things to play.  But it wasn’t the best of times for the game, as I previously covered, so I might be excused for giving it a miss.

I even found my save from my original run at the game… Steam cloud save for the win.  I might have to go back and see what happened back on August 24, 2017… though the game says that save needs to be updated.  We’ll see.

But here we are in 2024, the game is about to turn eight, and I am playing it again.  All I knew when I started was that I didn’t like it seven years ago, but a lot has changed.

Now, in starting off down this path, I had a plan.  I was going to go through the game slowly and write a series of fairly granular views of the game as it took me through various aspects of coming up to speed… and then I got into it, found myself a dozen hours in, and now I feel like Iago Montoya.

Really, there is too much

So let me sum up in a bit of an initial speed run to get at least to a baseline from which I can continue.  I plan to do this in chunks still, but somewhat less granular chunks.  Also, I promise this will be the last time I get into the history of the game, that having been over-covered here and in my previous post. (I can also promise I will, at some point, break that promise.  Also, I am from Crete and all Cretans are liars.)

Again, I don’t remember how the game started in 2017… I have searched my brain, but have found nothing to trigger any old memories… so maybe what I am seeing now was there then, though something

But here in 20204… where I will attempt to stay going forward… NMS starts off with the classic shipwreck, amnesia scenarios.  I will occasionally mock these over-used, but I also recognize you do have manifest a player into a game as a fully formed adult with no expectation of knowledge and no desire to over burden them with stuff, and there are only so many smooth ways to do that.

And, even having opted for a well worn trope, NMS does it pretty effectively.

You wake up, everything is broken, your ship is on fire, and you are being irradiated by a hostile atmosphere and are being told you need to do something.  There is a task list for you, an urgent task list if the tone is accepted… though I suspect you have as much time as you need… though I did not test that hypothesis.  I found myself caught up in the fire drill.

First you have to fix your multi-tool.  Then it comes up and tells you that your scanner is down.

The scanner is on the fritz captain

Not just down, but critically damage and there is a task that demands you repair it immediately by using the newly working multi-tool to mine some ferrite dust.  So off I went, first trying to mining laser attachment on the nearest thing.

Dude, this doesn’t say ferrite, now does it?

Then, after looking around a bit, I found something that would actually yield ferrite.

What a strange looking mineral

With that I was able to gather enough ferrite dust to fix the scanner.

Fixing the scanner was critical as my environmental protection was blinking at me about being low on this radioactive planetary surface.  You need the scanner to find things that will yield sodium, that being what the fuels the protective layer of your suit.  So I scanned and went chasing after sodium, then went about trying to harvest some.

Misunderstanding the lesson

The joke in that image is that you just need to pick the plant by holding down the E key.  The mining laser is not needed nor will it actually do anything in this situation.  I was learning.

And I wasn’t just learning about what to mine and what to pluck from the ground.  I was learning about the UI and control scheme.

As noted previously, NMS is a cross-platform title.

Available on a platform near you

This means that its UI is setup to accommodate both PC mouse and keyboard as well as a controller.  This means some compromises, such as a layered menu system that can feel a bit inflexible if you’re used to PC responsiveness.

Still, I will grant that they have done a good job with the compromise, on par with Forza Horizon… which means I still get lost and you have to remember that a tab of options even exist because they don’t just hang it somewhere on a bar on the UI the way one might with a PC.

The most immediate thing I had to get used to was the need to hold down a key on selections, such as the E in the sodium harvesting image, rather than just hitting the key and getting an immediate response.  The comic side effect of this is that when I swap over to something like EVE Online I find myself clicking and holding on options that do not require that level of effort.

Anyway, I found my sodium and then was guided how to recharge my suit so it would stop telling me about my impending demise.

Just get the sodium in the right slot

That sorted, it was back to the burning ship and getting that repaired, which involved me learning about how to craft things from my suit and apply them to my ship.

The ship parts list

That also required me to find a hermetic seal, something that I could not craft.  That sent me off to a marker, a bit of exploration, to some buildings where I might find the missing part.  Moving around on the surface.

Just some buildings

That red diamond with the somewhat inverted tuning fork… or whatever it is… is the universal important quest marker telling you where to go… which, at the moment was sending me into some buildings.

I found my hermetic seal.  I also found that buildings are good.  Inside of a building my environmental protections stop nagging me and even recharge.  Buildings made me happy at that point.  Eventually though, I had to leave the building and head into the radioactive landscape and back to my ship.

The game brought me through a few other tasks, like the deployment and use of a portable refiner, which can convert raw elements I harvest into more usable forms.

Portable refiner

The final thing to fix was analysis visor

Analyze this

This is a critical bit of your kit as it allows you to find key minerals and things you can salvage on the landscape as well as being able to scan and record new things you run into, for which you receive a bounty.  Cash money for finding stuff is good.

That done, the ship refueled, the game then pushes you to get off of the radioactive hell hole it started you on and into space.  Wheee!

My ship lives, I am flying in space

And then it sends you to another planet… see the quest marker… when I found I had given up radioactivity for extreme heat.  I am not sure which hurts market value more.

Here on Yardo the temps are a bit high

Goodbye Jovi, hello Yardo.  The temps are not too bad if you stay inside.  The fact that there are firestorms that pop up now and again is a bit of a drawback.

So I made it out of the initial “let’s get you going” tutorial and onto another planet.  So far, so good.

Though I will say, for a game with the title No Man’s Sky, there are, in fact, a lot of things flying past in the sky.  Like all the time.

More like Crowded Sky

That isn’t bad, though I keep looking over my shoulder when I hear something flying overhead.

Anyway, I am getting stuck into NMS.

It might not be unreasonable to ask if we really need a Civilization VII, but there it is, having been announced at Summer Games Fest.  We’re getting Civ VII.  Do we want lucky number 7?

Wishlist now, buy in 2025 or so…

And I don’t even mean that in some of the more obvious ways, like “do we need another 4x strategy title?”  I mean, sure, my Steam library already has enough unplayed or underplayed titles in it, why would I add more?

But there is always room for another GOOD game in the world, and few titles have engendered as much support as the Civilization series.  Just last year I went back to see if I could play all of the Civilization series variations.  And I could.  And you can to, if you have the patience.

Maybe what I mean is whether or not we really need another Civilization launch experience.

As a day one purchaser of Civilization versions II through V, I can attest that the experience became remarkably predictable.

The game will, of course, be extremely resource intensive.  Traditionally a Civilization title will barely run on any but the most current hardware and won’t run at its full potential until we’re a few more processor generations down the road.

That will lead to turning down the graphical settings… and the graphics will always be completely overblown with tiny levels of detail that you will see once, then cease to notice or care about half a dozen games into your experience… and being unable to take on max opponent matches unless you are willing to patiently wait for the computer players to get on with it already.

Then there will be the bugs and crashes.  Fortunately, we’re now in an era where patching is automated… though that has the perverse effect of many publishers just pushing whatever they have on launch day with an eye towards fixing things going forward.  So the game crashing on day one is practically a hallowed tradition and one I expect will continue.

Same as it ever was

The fact that the plan is to ship on PlayStation, XBox, Switch, Windows, MacOS,and some flavor of Linux (probably the SteamOS version) doesn’t make me feel better about stability.  I mean, one of the traditional broken aspects of a Civ launch is some portion of the multiplayer, and adding in the promise of full cross-platform play just multiplies the things that could go wrong along with the compromises that will need to be made.

As an aside, while I have played a number of titles that work well cross-platform, I have also had to endure my share of UI choices that are slow and awful on the PC, but which were put in place because of console requirements.  I hope Sid doesn’t forget where most the units are going to sell.

And then there is the game itself, which has reached a state where it seems to require a couple of expansions before it really settles down to a solid representation of the vision the team had when they set out… or to be really enjoyable… though Civ VI just became more gummed down in minutiae for me.  Will what we get in 2025… and you can bet it will be more like Holiday season 2025 than New Years Day 2025… be worth rushing out to grab?

Then what will the price point be?  The new normal is $70, but there will no doubt be additional premium versions in the $100-$150 range that add additional civs and other digital items.  And Sid might decide it is time to roll the dice with $80-$100 as an initial price for a series so well known.

In with that initial price, plus the day one DLC, plus the forthcoming paid expansions, there will no doubt be a game pass to buy as well.

As an MMORPG player, the who concept of the “game pass” still isn’t clear to me.  It feels like a bet, like you pay up front with the promise you’ll get all the new content for the next year covered, but there is no guarantee as to what that content will be and so it could be “great, best purchase ever” or it might mark me as a huge sucker.  And the industry hasn’t done much to reassure me on all of that.

Finally, we get to the big question, the giant freaking elephant in the room, the raison d’etre that must underlay this whole announcement… after six runs at the Civilization idea… or eight if you count Alpha Centauri (which you absolutely should) and Beyond Earth (which you can freely ignore in my book)… what is going to be new, different, or otherwise make what might be iteration 9 stand apart from its predecessors?

Well, Sid sure as hell isn’t saying.  The line on the official site is:

The award-winning strategy game franchise returns with a revolutionary new chapter. Sid Meier’s Civilization VII empowers you to build the greatest empire the world has ever known!

And the teaser trailer does do much save imply that there will be the usual overwrought cut scenes that you’ll turn turn off after a couple of runs because they’ll become dull on repetition or crash your system… both options have precedent.

I have been turning those options off since the palace thingy in the original Civilization.

I mean, I like the idea of reworking the franchise, but “revolutionary new chapter” could mean many things.  In my head I would like a reexamination of what may the early titles great and keeps them playable to this day in a way that might unencumber the state of play now exemplified in Civ VI.

But, with the state of tech right now, it might mean AI, blockchain, VR headsets, and an attempt to create a metaverse 4X title.  Has anybody seen Marc Andreesen skulking around?  That would surely be a bad sign.  I don’t think Sid Meier would need to stoop to that level, but then again, I could say the same about some other industry luminaries who have sold out early and often in the last decade.

We can also add in the fact that Sid isn’t getting any younger.  He’s Jerry Seinfeld’s age, and look how out of touch Jerry has become, an old man yelling at kids to get off his damn lawn.  And while I can’t speak to Sid’s views on cancel culture and the ability of comedians to be offensive, it does feel like, at the historical rate of release for Civilization titles in the 21st century, he might not be around for a Civilization VIII.

As such, he may see this as his legacy project and be tempted to pour in everything he has ever dreamed about in the past.  It is a temptation.  I hope he can restrain himself and maybe channel a bit of the Steve Jobs “less is more” philosophy… though who am I kidding?  What Civ title has ever showed such restraint in any quarter?

All of which is a whole lot of speculation because, aside from the teaser, we won’t get any REAL information about the game until they do a game play demo in August.  So we’ll have to wait.

In the mean time, I went over to Steam and did as commanded.  It is now on my wishlist.  For all my gripes above, I want to see where this is going.

One last roll of the dice Sid, for you and me both.  You might not have it in your to make another Civ title after this and, given the history of Alzheimer’s in my family, I might not have it in me to wait around and play another Civ title.  At some point “one more turn” will become “one last turn” for the both of us, so make it good.

Related:

• 2K Site – Civilization VII Announcement
• Steam – Civilization VII Page
• PC Gamer – Civilization 7 exists, but if you want to know more than that you’re going to have to wait for its full reveal in August