Further Adventures In No Man's Sky

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN NO MAN'S SKY

My journey through space took me to a Mars-like planet. Its brown orb hung suspended against the purple backdrop of space. From this vantage point I could look down past the sparse clouds that appeared here and there and make out the tortured surface of a rocky world. What appeared to be thin dark lines from up in orbit would undoubtedly turn out to be cast canyons and crevices when I was down on the surface.

As my spacecraft broke through the thin atmosphere, I saw before me a hot and desolate world. The Sun baked the land, casting an orange glow over a landscape of desert and rock. There was absolutely no sign of any vegetation anywhere.

Embarking from my spacecraft, I turned up the sensors embedded in my environment-protection suit to pick up for signs of life, if any. There was nothing to greet my arrival save for a hot wind which blew incessantly. Before me stretched mile after mile of baking rock. There was not a blade of grass, not so much as a tough and hardy desert plant clinging bravely to some parched patch of land. The sounds of animals carried on the wind? No. This was a dead world. There was no life here.

Throughout the day I walked across this lonely landscape. Finally, the oppressively-hot sun sunk behind the hills in the distance, affording me some comfort from the incessant heat and altering the predominant colours of this landscape from orange to purple. Throughout my trek across this burning landscape I contemplated how fragile a thing a biosphere truly is. Scientists speak of a Goldilocks Zone, a place in a solar system not too far from the sun to prevent water from turning to ice, and yet not so near that water boiled away leaving nothing but parched rock, sand and dust. This planet was clearly too close to its parent star to have liquid water and so, until I arrived to witness this sunset, the only thing present on this world were the rocks and the wind, unconscious witnesses to a world which saw time measured in eons go pass, and nothing and no one to remember the days that had gone by.

I could take this intolerably lonely world no longer, and set off in search of new worlds...

Thanks to Hello Games for the images.