Yes. I’d like to avoid that manual labour. Call me lazy.
There’s also the thing that it’s just a really stark difference in terms of immersion if you can put your notes down in-game, and associated with your savegame.
Maybe not for general notes on mechanics, exploits, and stuff. But that’s not what I’m after. The thing is, games like NMS require a lot of interpretation by the player to make sense of the results of the procgen and flesh out the world with details from their own imagination where the game isn’t deep enough. It’s always been like this for certain types of games. Privateer, Elite, Daggerfall, even Morrowind to an extent (mostly for keeping track of character development), old-school crpgs like Megatraveller, realms of arcania, exploration games like starflight, the list goes on into infinity. All htese games have vastly profitted from diagetic journaling, turning what is, on the face of it, a generic world without much dynamics into a personalised world fuelled by the players imagination.
Old-school games (though not like what they call “old-school” nowadays, really. I mean, old school) often did that neat trick where they had diagetic manuals, i.e. manuals written in a way as though they were existing in the games world. And RPGs frequently had a section of empty pages in that manual for journaling.
It’s become a bit of a lost art nowadays, at least where computer games are concerned. And a lot of that has to do with there just being no journaling function in-game. I’ve played daggerfall and morrowind with simple journaling mods that let you write journal entries yourself (in the case of morrowind, it just let you write stuff into books in the actual game world, completely bypassing the journal UI - good enough), and it just hits so much differently than tabbing out of the game every couple minutes…
One of the Myst games had an in game journal. URU, I think. Mine was filled with my first person narrative which I wrote as I played. Complete immersion was the result and I had a step by step guide to solving various puzzles for future refrence. It was made even more fun because after typing in my notes, they turned into a really nice hand written style font, making it feel even more like I was writing in a journal.
Well, steam now has a “notes” section. Which I’ve used once when it came out and keep forgetting to use. It’s below the achievements section on the right.
Much prefer it to be in game of course, but better than nothing, and at least it won’t disappear on a format or new pc.
Ahh… Myst. Loved the graphics, mystery, and puzzles, though some were hard.
As for game notes…
I started an Excel workbook a while back and tracked a ton of region, system, planet, and portal data. Then came updates that made the data obsolete. I gave that up. But I do a photo as I arrive at each star system, then on planet landing, to include glyphs. I snap a shot of key POC in visor view to show the Lat/Long.
Why? Because their restless, that’s why. Why are they restless? Because players consume too quickly and bore too easily. Solution: IMHO, “Every Galaxy Procedural” “Everything Procedural” “Spread it ALL out!”
Forecast:
NMS offers greater freedom, survival, exploration and discovery. SF focuses on delivering a story, that story is based in our real-life future. The setting happens to be our universe, somewhat fleshed out, in order to deliver that story. SF offers a few things that NMS doesn’t, like starship customization and human face customization, but these are 2 very different games. Don’t go into SF looking for NMS, it’s not there. Enjoy SF or skip it entirely, once the SF story has passed, exploration and discovery seem short-lived…
1000 planets
100 with a fauna or 2
planetary loading screens
predetermined planetary landing areas
medium quality resolutions, no VR, no multiplayer
Starfield: New space game arrives!
No Man’s Sky: Update “Echoes” and Expedition “Voyagers” awaits!
Update: The leaked footage of a 10 min. walk from ship until, “boundary reached,” may be from an intro tutorial. Here’s hoping! My forecast is based on marketing, news and leaks, so far. Actual results may vary.
