The Dangers of Naming
I have felt little attachment to any planet in No Man’s Sky, though I appreciate the spectrum of colors they employ and the range of moods they can conjure. I’ve marveled at purple-skied planets teeming with life and at desolate rocks where the image of my little starship alone on a barren landscape recalls in me the kind of radical solitude I once felt on road trips during those long stretches when gas stations were few and far between and every radio station had been swallowed by static.
And yet, I’ve always been happy to put a system behind me as soon as I have the resources I need to make the next warp. For all their variety, these worlds have largely felt disposable to me, because almost every feature on them is something functional, something to be plundered for my own gain, rather than something existing for its own sake. I want to simply inhabit these places as places and take in their distinctive beauty, and sometimes I manage to do it. But games teach us how to relate to them, and this game has trained me so that some part of my brain is always scanning the landscape for something I can really use.
After my latest jump, though, I found a particularly beautiful and inviting world, and on a whim, motivated by some strange association my mind had made, I named the planet after a friend I’d had to say goodbye to who I hadn’t wanted to say goodbye to. His name, backwards, an alien word fit for a planet, yet warm and familiar to me. And now I don’t want to leave, not until I’ve crested every hill to see what lies beyond. Maybe not even then. Because the vastness of No Man’s Sky means that when I leave this world, my travels will probably never bring me back this way again.
I may have named this planet and, to use the game’s terminology, “discovered” it (though it’s already dotted with alien outposts and ruins of ancient cultures) but I’m not conquering it and adding it to my collection of planets. Here it will remain, perhaps to be chanced upon by another traveler someday. I may see worlds that are similar in one way or another, but I know that none of them will be this world, just as I may meet people who remind me of my friend in one way or another, but know that none of them will be him.
I’m reluctant to harvest resources from this world. I don’t want my brain interpreting its landscapes as a random collection of functional, destructible items, even if the game keeps reminding me that that’s exactly what they are. I want to take it in as something whole and unique and beautiful. The gameplay of No Man’s Sky diminishes the ability of places to be meaningful and valuable in and of themselves, since you know that there are a near-infinite number of other worlds out there that all have what you might need. For me, the act of naming this particular planet after a friend I’d lost restored, perhaps too well, the sense of uniqueness I’d sought but hadn’t found in any of the game’s other worlds.
There’s one small exception to my desire to leave the world untouched. It’s a planet with many vast pools of water, and many of those pools contain aquastones. I’ve let myself imagine my friend standing on the edge of these pools, waiting for me, smiling, as if he might just jump in and swim with me. I see the aquastones as a kind of gift. Like he’d want me to have them. Something to take with me. Something to hold onto.
And I know none of this is actually in the game. It’s just a trick of the heart, emerging out of a desire to feel a connection with someone I’ve lost. But I may linger on this world just a little bit longer, not wanting to acknowledge that sooner or later, I have to say goodbye.
Notes
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This says really smart things about No Man’s Sky, why parts of it work, why parts of it don’t, and why I’m generally...
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