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…from my explorations in No Man’s Sky

Scan is your friend

The Scan function (a.k.a. the mind palace) is your ability to scan the area and see objectives and things you can interact with. On the PS4/PS5, holding the R2 button scans.

Get used to this and use it frequently. You will see your current objectives, and interactables will appear with a yellow icon. You’ll be able to rotate the camera 360 degrees while in scan as well. There are a few other things you can do with scanning that you’ll discover throughout the game. If you aren’t sure what to do, scan and look around.

Some things to remember with scanning:

• The game pauses while scanning, so if you need a minute to think, hit scan and take a breather.
• The camera will stay in approximately the same place when you let go of scan. This makes it easy to reorient the camera if you are having trouble moving it around.
• While most interactable objects will show up when you scan, not all will (including some important ones). Don’t let a lack of icon keep you from checking things out.
• Most icons will disappear after you interact with the object. However, magazines will continue to have an icon even after you interact with them. That’s doesn’t mean there’s a clue or you missed something – they just always show active.

Beware the choice descriptions

You will get a lot of options to choose from in the game, especially during dialog. You’ll be given short descriptions of the options, usually one word. Sometimes what the character actually says will not be what you expected. Connor has this problem a lot. Characters sometimes have unexpected reactions to options as well. Be prepared that it is inconsistant throughout the game.

Some hints on dialog options:

• Options that are timed have a little meter below them that goes down quickly. If there’s no line, you can take your time on the choice. You can pause in the middle of a timed choice if you need to think.
• Options with a blue corners around them are actions – they mean the character is going to do something rather than talk about doing something. It doesn’t mean that the action will have a better outcome, however.
• Be careful with options labeled ‘Determined’, as in many cases the character will come across more aggressive than you expect (especially Markus).

Don’t sweat the flowchart

The flowchart has a lot of options and details, but if often a bit arbitrary in terms of what it records and where. I’ve seen a lot of people fret when they missed things or when there are blank steps in what they thought was a complete runthough of the chapter. Don’t worry about it – the game is meant to be replayed.

Some things to remember:

• The entire flowchart cannot be accessed in one playthrough. There are branches only accessable by certain choices especially big choices.
• A lot of steps on the flowchart are side details – did you see X, did you read the magazines, did you do Y on the way to Z, etc. You don’t have to fill them all in for a good experience and many have no lingering effect on the game.

Well, here I am with a new blog. I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use it. My hope is that I’ll be writing a bit more on various topics. I don’t have a real theme in mind, so I am as likely to talk about conlangs or gaming as I am to post a long stream of consciousness rant about the nature of the universe.

This wordpress blog has a few ‘formats’ of posts (quote, status, aside, etc.) that I’ll be playing with for various things. We’ll see how that works out. I also will be reposting some old stuff from previous blogs just to have them out there, as it were.