Years back I spent a happy afternoon in No Man’s Sky just stood on a single spot. This is ridiculous, I know: No Man’s Sky’s selling point is the moment you launch yourself from a planet’s surface, up into space, through the twisting ether and then down onto the surface of another planet without taking a breath. It’s a game about movement, and about leaving a place to know that you’ll probably never return to it.
But anyway, this single spot was in a space station, and it was right next to the area where the incoming and departing spaceships like to park. I was basically in an outer space garage watching the cars come and go. Except I was orbiting a planet, and the cars were spaceships.
And they were all beautiful. No Man’s Sky’s ships are modular, I think, and as I waited for most of the afternoon, I got to see these modular treats in all their forms. Some were squat little bugs. Others were sharp, needle-nosed darts. Some were beautifully symmetrical, others had weird lumps and protrusions and jets and fans where I wasn’t expecting them. They were all wildly charismatic.