The Void Mother cares about her children, and tries to protect them. The Atlas cares nothing for its creations or their suffering.
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I don’t know. Does she care or control? I guess a part of me feels sad for the Atlas.
But, I believe we will see a merger of the 2.
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Here’s a thought:
It was said during Waking Titan that if a simulation attempts to simulate something more complex than itself, it will cause a measurable slow-down in our own universe. It was by observing this slow-down that Elizabeth Leighton’s team hoped to prove the success of their simulation.
What if a simulation successfully simulating something more complex causes not a slow-down, but the collapse, of the entire universe? And what is a collapsed universe, but a supermassive black hole?
What if the cause of the black hole is the Void Mother’s attempt to escape the Atlas? Now that would have a suitably ironic circularity.
The Atlas sees a future Korvax prime as the cause of its death - so it destroys Korvax Prime.
Korvax Primes lives on as the Void Mother, and seeks to escape the Atlas.
The Void Mother’s attempt to escape turns out to be the very thing that is destroying the Atlas.
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I believe it mentions it in one of the boundary breach logs that an approaching black hole is causing mayhem for the Atlas’s home system, I gather it’s the threat to its local star that is the big problem for the Atlas, and its possible the proximity to the black hole as it approaches is causing some whacky interference with the Atlas itself.
I also strongly suspect the Atlas’s star itself has become a red dwarf.
The constant repetition and image of a world under a red star that travellers are given, I’ve always felt this is an image of the Atlas’s home world. It’s giving the samee urgency to the Travellers that it must feel upon seeing the image, as one of their first thoughts or memories when being birth into the simulation.
I also hypothesise the black hole is what’s causing the boundarys to break between the iterations of concurrent run simulations. It’s never expressly stated but I also imagine entire universes/simulations are birthed and die in nano seconds from the Atlas real world perspective, which is why 16 minutes could still be Aeons from the Travellers perspectives.
A lot of assumptions and imaginings on my part of course.
My overarching theory is that the Atlas knows its universe too, in all likelihood, is a simulation. In order to escape it’s doom, it’s trying to see if something within its own code can defy the rules it’s set down and “escape”, break the limitations and maybe give hope the Atlas can do the same some how.
It destroyed K Prime in every iteration to see if it can defy its erasure. It wants the Void to succeed. It can’t see past it’s own death so it’s running the simulation as we know it now, to see past KPrimes death.
If it can’t simulate past it’s own demise, perhaps it can simulate it’s resurrection.
And that’s where I’m currently at, all subject to change 
I used to view the remembrance terminals as a sort of sweet and poetic ending, it didn’t matter who the figure was, whether it was real or wishful thinking on their part, they weren’t alone in the end, and isn’t that what we all wish for? I still view it that way, and that is fine with me, I don’t really need an answer, the who is not the important part.
But the Void declaring an escape in the form of Null, and all this talk of needing all the Anomalous versions of the Travellers, and Null being a Traveller who has drank the souls of many other Travellers… It makes sense Null is very integral to her plan. We also know Null is trapped within an Atlas station for a long time until we, “The Last”, appear, at which point they decide to make contact with us. It seems he can also get the souls of travellers after they’ve died as witnessed with the use of the Mind Arc.
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I always assumed that was what he’d been doing all along - he let them see everything they could, then when they died, he used the mind arc to make their memories his own. I haven’t come across an echo who said “Null murdered me”.
We’ve been told that the travellers are each corrupted copies of the creator - made from the scan that Atlas took. I have also presumed that the need to gather all the former travellers is so the original creator can be re-created, without the corruption. Multiple redundancy error checking.
Quite why the creator is required is another matter - I have no idea. Presumably, at least in the past, the Atlas could have chosen to create an exact and perfect copy of the creator - but it didn’t.
According to Telamon, one of the first signs of aberrant behaviour on the part of the Atlas was that it deleted from the simulation all the systems that resembled its home world. Again, I’m not sure what this signifies.
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My POV is as a selfish game player. I hope there is no true “end” to No Man’s Sky.
Beyond that I’m good with whatever Hello Games dreams up. 
I plant to start a fresh game after I order and get a new PC. I want the latest tutorial and lore as well as the vastly improved graphics card that will come with the new PC. I’m getting sick of lower details using my still-working GTX 960 with a measly 4GB.
That won’t come till after the new year, though. 
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I don’t think there will be. I do think the current story will reach some sort of conclusion - there has to be some sort of showdown or agreement between Atlas and the Void Mother - but I don’t see HG just shutting the thing down and ending it.
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Having just played thru the story, the main mission is to get to the center where the Atlas resides. Null tells us to. Then he begs us not to reset the system and thereby void all his work he did, no matter how terrible it was.
Currently, we do not actually reach the center but get booted into another galaxy.
It still seems as if we do need to reach the planet the Atlas is on and need to make a huge decision. The Atlas interfaces we enter are not going to do the job. We need to actually be there, with the Atlas at the last moment and make a decision.
Null does mention that we are different from all the other Travellers.
I really hope that we are the one there at the end.
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Theres a log somewhere, can’t remember where, but it mentions someone going through a portal who is then followed by a light bulb head who then re emerges alone.
I think there’s a few other mentions of travellers been murdered by another traveller too, and null seems to carry some form of guilt for their actions. As Sheryl mentioned, he admits he’s done terrible things to stay alive.
Whether that’s indirectly luring travellers to their demise or having a hand in it, I’m not 100%. So much lore in my head it’s all vague mush. I need my tomes 
One thing that stood out to me as being different from Atlas Rises nowadays was there being two versions of Artemis. One who Polo and Nada are familiar with, in fact they think you are them when first making contact. But the Artemis you meet, has no recollection of them.
While it’s possible this is just an early hint for the player at simulation iterations, it does make me wonder if the real Artemis is still out there in the world of glass somewhere.
Edit:
I’m also at this part in my Permadeath save, just returned to Artemis with the mind arc. 0_0
I forgot it felt like twenty years had passed for them since the star chart interaction.
Also reminds me, null is the one who reactivates the signal from Artemis’s grave. The mastery of control they have gained over the simulation in the length of time they’ve had to live is impressive, especially from the confines of an Atlas Station. They also seem to have been listening/watching us the whole time.
Edit 2:
I thought I’d check the sub simulations terminal before I decided Artemis’s fate. Was curious if the model was in there before we decide or only if after the decision.
They were in there before a decision was made :P.
I know the purpose from a game design pov is to have them there to cheese an NPC interaction node, but I thought it was pretty funny they’ve already made their own mind up
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Stars don’t become red dwarfs. They are born as red dwarfs, in which case they’ll stay that way for a loooong time, but stars that were not red dwarfs in their main sequence never become one. They usually become red giants, then collapse into a white dwarf. Unless they’re pretty massive, then they blow appart and may become a neutron star instead. Or, a couple more weightclasses higher, a black hole.
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Ah, I’m a space dummy, thanks for the clarification. It’s a red giant so 
my theory still stands 
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The thing I took away from that (at least, the last time I played it - the revised story) was that I had been through a portal in the intervening time. And what seemed like minutes to me, was years to Artemis. When you visit Nada to discuss your actions re Artemis, he also comments on how long you’ve been gone.
I think this ties in with the idea that the portals don’t transport you - they re-make you, in a different universe. It may be that you and Artemis were in the same universe - that you and Apollo could have met - but by getting you to step through the portal, the Atlas has ensured you can never meet. It may be that’s what all the “Warning - Anomaly!” and “Atlas Protocol Initiated” stuff at the portal was about. The Atlas was removing you to a time and place where you couldn’t interfere.
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This reminds me of the whole Ariadne situation that has yet to be resolved
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At some point I just kind of gave up trying to comprehend & memorise every nuance of NMS lore & now just roll with a generalised kind-of-get-it attitude.
I think I’ve learned more flipping through posts here, than I ever really soaked up during gameplay.
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I admit I feel the same. The story/lore feels like they took a few good plot points and then put it in a blender, compressed it, and served it in a golden sci-fi platter. Its the “spam”(the canned meat) of story/lore content 
For the record, I grew up on Spam and still eat it mixed with eggs for breakfast and in sandwiches.
I really… REALLY… hope that future NMS story content is less vague and “up for interpretation”, and more clear…
Hello Games, if your reading this, please make any story/lore in LNF ALOT easier to follow. 
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Yummy Spam. I still grab a can once or twice a year.
This last new save, I stuck to just the main story and ignored all side stories. It helped to keep the main story a little clearer, but still not completely understandable.
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During the course of my employment, I had cause to visit, and make close and thorough examination of, many premises involved in the food industry. I’ve been to gut scrapers, tripe dressesrs, waste animal parts rendering plants, slaughterhouses, lairages, and places that process green hides into gelatine. I’ve seen the blood boilers, the carcasses processed into blood and bone meal, and I’ve smelled the offal pits in August.
I can truthfully say that out of all of them, the only one that made me feel physically sick was the manufacture of a certain pink chopped pork product,
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All of which is why I am not a huge meat eater… 
My mom went to an actual butcher shop when I was a kid. The kind where they slaughtered out back and sold up front. The smell from those places was enough to put me off meat for life. Even now, I can’t figure the cravings people have for meat. Without seasonings, it is just a blech mass. I can make a meatless lasagna with spinach and you will never know the meat is missing.
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I love meat. Like I said, none of the above put me off - only the pink pork product.
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Bosnian Barbeque: Take a walk with extended family and a sheep on a rope in the morning, come home without sheep in the evening. 
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