They can keep it

No Man's Sky is now infamous for its underwhelming release, and - more shockingly - extensive post-release make-up efforts. It's a hell of a story! Shame the game itself isn't that interesting.

The feature-set is really impressive, technologically: that you can seamlessly jump from planets to space and back, that your custom buildings and terrain modifications persist anywhere, that your character and inventory are portable and can share in another player's universe freely...

But why?

I won't say that there's "nothing" to do in No Man's Sky, 'cause it certainly ticks the Open World Survival Craft boxes of Survival, and of Craft -- there are plenty of life-support meters to manage, tools to charge, crafting resources to collect and convert and upgrade and et cetera. If you're into that kind of game-loop, juggling supplies while building a sci-fi mansion, this is a great place to do it.

Personally, I'm not interested in that. Fallout 4's base-building was a chore I skipped, and in Palworld I only made what I needed for gear upgrades (and for my Dragonite's missile launcher). Hell, my co-op partner and I turned off the survival mechanics - kudos to the game for these options - because they got in the way of exploration.

And No Man's Sky doesn't seem to have anything else worth doing. Its vast, awe-inspiring space only goes so far -- the terrain and wildlife and salvage that's procedurally generated on each planet ultimately feels bland, and so exploration for its own sake just isn't satisfying.

The game's storyline, following mystery signals across the universe, is threadbare and tropey. Compared to the compelling drama of Outer Wilds's sci-fi mystery, No Man's Sky's narrative is like an afterthought. ... well, yeah, I guess much of it literally was added a year later.

In the end, while I can admire how No Man's Sky (eventually) followed through on its ambitious designs, the core game of it is still pretty limited: build a house in space. Meh.