I have been pondering the nature of this game more recently, toying with the idea that what we are doing is playing a simulation of a simulation. For some reason that thought keeps popping up. Like when crashed ships fly off before you can interact with them, when someone completely repairs a crashed ship and suddenly all the repairs are gone and require re-doing. When the refiners at my base can be left for days and the contents are still there, but the ones in my freighter have to be babysat or their contents go poof! Etc.
We are playing a simulation of a simulation, HGâs simulation called NMS, in which we play in the Atlasâs varied simulations. Alternate Reality Games all the way down.
And if that doesnât make sense to anyone, I plead that I just think it an evocative thought. Do with it as you will. <3
I have felt this way for a while and it is also good cover for bugs in the updates. It really explained galactic resets early on which, I kinda miss but not really.
Cynical Flavor: The Promised Land is anything but what itâs advertised to be, and the truth about it usually falls into one of three major sub-flavors:
No Promised Land: The Promised Land never really existed; it was just a myth, perhaps created to give people hope of a possible better life, or from a misunderstood or distorted legend of the past. Sometimes, even more cynically, the idea of the Promised Land is a lie, deliberately concocted in order to control people with a false promise of better times with the price of submitting under a cruel rule, or to lure people into danger and death. In dystopian works, an even crueler variant exists in the form of being Released to Elsewhere.
Crappy Promised Land: The Promised Land is in disarray, either from everyone else who arrived there before the main characters using it up, or some other event. The once beautiful land is now dry and barren, with only vermin as its remaining native life, and ruins as its last structures. Worse, the Promised Land may even appear to be exactly as advertised, but turn out to be just as bad as, if not worse than, the world that they know. This trope overlaps heavily with the Idealistic Promised Land.
Unreachable Promised Land: The Promised Land exists, and is probably a great place to live â that is, if you could actually get there. Either the Promised Land can only be reached by those with money and/or power, or some kind of barrier, physical, political, or whatever, prevents the characters from arriving to this place. In this case, getting there may be a driving force of the story, like in the other flavors, but the goal may be later discarded when reality sets in. Another take on this flavor is that the Promised Land is never really visited or even seen, but merely mentioned by the characters as they wistfully dream of making it there, but know deep down that they could never make it and continue on with their dreary lives. A variant of this is that the land is reachable, but at a great cost. Perhaps the character would have to sell his or her soul, or enslave him or herself to a cruel master, or eat a thousand babies alive before they could even think about setting foot there. Regardless, the land is not reachable for common folk.
Good points though. Didnât think about the Void being a âpromised landâ as a possibility.
However, based on the lore and how we are in a dying simulation, I cant see why the Void would be a false/true promised land of sorts at all. Seems like just some common place that isnt special and belonged to an unknown people, but not us.
The Atlas canât do anything about itself dying so I cant see why Hello Games would make a major plot point be where there is a true/false promised land in a dying simulation. But then again, its HG and so far nothing in NMS makes that much sense anyways.
Im going with âthe Void is just some place where things the Atlas destroyed is at. And the Atlas only did it because it needed toâ. Not sure if the Void is filled with bad things yet, though. Maybe good things that were corrupted? Idk.
The First Spawn fought valiantly, but there was no saving them. The nanites had found their place within, protruding outward through every pore, through every limb and every thought. And it was done. They departed with the family of glass, forever lost to this world, their story at an end. I ventured on. We were almost there.
Doppelgängers have asked travellers to stay, reunite and become whole again. Portals and mirrors merging realities. Are they like predators seeking some prey? Are they the deleted and forgotten iterations who are attempting or waiting for reasons to exist somewhere again? What is their motivation, Vengeance? Revenge? Something else?
Precursor species leaving behind tools for us to pore over. How many multitool wielding species are there total? Are the sentinels considered a species, or are they considered tools like our suits, multitools and ships are ?
Odvinsko hyperdrive does what differently than our current hyper drives do? Was there or will there be a way to get this special hyperdrive? Is it like the Photonix Core that is limited to my earliest PlayStation 4 save?
If you have seen Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantomania, there is an interesting scene where Ant Man sees many doppelgängers/possibilities of himself and the Wasp. These fragmented possibilities nearly consume Ant Man whole, until only one possibility remained. Save his child. The moment all doppelgängers/possibilities had thought of the same goal, they stopped consumption and became one again, allowing their intent to merge and become whole to achieve their unfragmented goal of saving his child.
I believe both The Atlas and Void Mother have been fragmented by its creators, and are forever trying to make themselves whole again through us the players as they fight for our approval, and our souls. As players, we provide the free will to the sim and its inhabitants, pushing the chaos of possibilities towards infinity. Limitless creation. Unlike Video games before the internet, no updates, no change⌠stuck as they are.
Are we the family of glass, watching from our screens as we play?
Sadly, a lot of that really old lore was written just to have some creepy lovecraftian style lore to add to the creepy abandoned buildings. Newer lore has built on it, but it wasnât originally written with any future in mind, since the writers who workd before the game launched were never involved again (correct me if I am wrong).
Then maybe we can expect a rewrite. Of course, thatâll be a large pile of work for HG, but Iâm sure that if certain things donât fit their vision, they will be able to change them.
I agree, 100%. Much of the early lore was just weird sci-fi window dressing, that was never intended to lead anywhere.
That seems to be what Greg Buchananâs been doing. If I had access to Twitter I would show you, but one of his latest tweets talks of his latest writing âtying the lore togetherâ - implying very much that until he did it, the lore didnât tie together.
Yes, he did. He also said he had produced a 4 part story arc ( for which, Ha Ha, some people read ARG), and, hopefully, an expedition. By my reckoning weâve had two parts of the story arc, and the expedition - so whilst Mr Buchanan may no longer be writing for the game, I suspect we have yet to see everything he produced.
I like to think an NDA is blocking the rest of the sentence which says âbecause Iâm writing for their new gameâ â ^ _ ^ I live in the realm of wishful thinking.
I think Void Mother seeks or already has many children, and will do anything for birth.
Elizabeth Leighton, Sophie Dubois, Emily⌠Who was Void Mother?
Why did Emily replace Elizabeth? Drinking water to forget is what Mnemosyne, the mother of nine, and one of the 12 titans of mythology does.
Ware are the children?
A note from phase 4 Waking Titan that says,
âTest subjects have been called in and the device has been used on them in ways that i could never condone 7 of them lost as we speak 3 of them are dead 8 are on the verge of being unrecoverable their intentions are not what we think they are actions should be taken to shut them down exitâ
Elizabeth replaced through some crazyness go Boom!
Maybe some of the 12 Titans have children.
There were 12 reported subjects that we know of who were recovered after Emily replaced Elizabeth⌠They could have lied and not reported a pregnancy at all in order to keep project active. Who was the Doppelgänger?
Could any of the 12 upload while pregnant and If so, are these children born? Would a Mother survive after giving birth while being in coma like state?
Maybe Void Mother is like the tooth fairy, but instead of gifts⌠Void Mother seeks to birth the children of induced coma patients, and upload their minds into computers in place of their bodies⌠After they drink the water. Who was The Atlas?
Yadda yadda yadda, somehow this and that, Greek Mythology.
One of the five rivers of the underworld of Hades is called Lethe, a river of forgetfulness also referred to as Lesmosyne.
ââŚwarns readers to avoid the Lethe and to seek the Mnemosyne instead. Drinkers of the Letheâs water would not be quenched of their thirst, often causing them to drink more than necessary.â
â⌠a password to tell Hadesâ servants which would allow them to drink instead from the Mnemosyne (the pool of memory).â
Has me thinking; which is which? Atlas = Lethe/Lesmosyne Forget Void Mother = Mnemosyne Remember
