Further Adventures In No Man's Sky

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN NO MAN'S SKY

Warping out of hyperspace, I was confronted with the most amazing sight. For once the view outside my cockpit was not of some planetary system hanging silently amid the infinite void of space, but of some kind of interstellar conflict. A vast ship, evidently a battle cruiser of some kind, had swarms of smaller craft buzzing around it. And in the distance, a fleet of other craft followed.

Cautiously, I slipped through the chaos of laser fire and debris from struck ships. I saw a bulky looking craft, perhaps a freighter of some kind, get struck by a ship to ship missile. It trailed flame and smoke as it fell like a meteor to smash against the mile-long bulk of the cruiser.

Leaving the battle behind me, I made my way to one of this system's planets. Its surface appeared to be made up of red rock, only occasionally broken up by small lakes and mysterious black patches. There was evidently an atmosphere of some kind, as proven by the huge banks of white clouds. I also noticed a large aurora.

I headed down toward the surface, aiming for a spot that would bring me near to one of the planet's bodies of water. As I cut through the dense cloud cover the uniform red gave way to golden hills rolling through red sandstone and vegetation. Trees were growing here and there, and rising above the horizon was the sun, making the crests of waves blaze with fire.

Settling the craft down, I stepped out onto what was obviously an inhabited planet. Grasses of purple and brown carpeted the ground beneath my feet, and wandering through it was a veritable menagerie of weird and wonderful creatures. I saw something that looked like a dog crossed with a stegosaurus, and in the distance, as tall as the trees, some bipedal alien creature unlike anything on earth.

As I made my way along the grassy hills, I encountered yet another odd-looking animal. It would be impossible to compare this being with any terrestrial animal. The best description I can give would be to say it was what a space hopper would look like, where it a living creature. The animal bounded toward me, and regarded me with two huge eyes. And then it took off, bouncing away over the hill and out of my sight.

Onwards I walked, accompanied by the myriad calls of strange alien beasts. The sun gradually began to set and the grasslands and hills became bathed in the orange-red of a spectacular sunset. I decided to make my way to the summit of the hill in the distance.

As I was making my way there, I became aware of smoke rising up from some valley. My curiosity piqued, I headed in its direction. There, laying in ruins was one of the spaceships I had encountered earlier. I felt saddened that all that technological capability and all the resources that must have gone into building such a craft now lay as a half-buried wreck on this world. How many lives had been lost when this craft went down, and what kind of lives did those people lead or hope to? All questions to which I had no answers.

My adventure continued.

Thanks to Hello Games for the images.