No Man’s Sky — Is an alien language really applicable?

If I had a nickel for every lie of this game, I’d have 9 nickels or so

At this point, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the infamous story that is No Man’s Sky — a tale of so many promises and even more broken ones. I forgot about the subject entirely because I dropped the game after three days or so. Basically, if I go on about what was and what should’ve been No Man’s Sky, I would need more than a paragraph. But basically, it goes like this…

There once was a guy who will be solely referred to as “Quince” for the purpose of this article. And he told the world that he (and probably a bunch of other people) is working on a game that has… get this… 18 quintillion planets. And everyone was so impressed because of how big the game was going to be. Of course, Quince promised a bunch of other stuff. Long story short, the disappointment was as big as the world of the game itself, and remember, this game has 18 quintillion planets, and THAT is a really big number.

In any case, I was told that the game got better with subsequent updates after the disaster that was its launch. Although at that point, I stopped caring and moved on to other stuff (what that stuff was, I have no idea). But the one thing that I did find interesting about the game, while I still played it, is that the game has its own language system.

There are all kinds of alien languages, but they’ll sound the same anyway

So you play as this person who flies around space in a spaceship, right? And he’s visiting different planets, and all of these planets have different attributes to them. Some have more fauna than others; others will have more lava in the core of their earth, and so forth. But sometimes, or all the times, you’ll come across an alien whose tongue you do not share (thank goodness for that). To you, it sounds like someone trying to speak and drink water simultaneously, like a ventriloquist in training. So how do you come across to each other in all the black holes when even “hello” doesn’t work?

Well, frankly, the game offers you exactly the solution: monoliths! Specifically, the game expects you to fly world to world searching for large stones that provide a very redundant history speech on the star system’s current state and provide you with the knowledge of only one word in the alien language. I don’t know how many alien tongues are there, but still, that’s a lot of stones to come across. And English has what, 22,000 words in it?

My point is it’s no different than reading a terrestrial (as in “on Earth”) language. To me, it could be Spanish, and it wouldn’t make a difference. Why do I have to go world to world and learn word by word a language that’s basically English with funny-looking letters?

Save me the intergalactic trip; I’ll just use the Internet

There’s a very simple solution: go to the Internet and find mods that automatically translate the language. I mean, everyone uses translators nowadays, and you should too unless you want to learn the language, then good for you.

But then again, is that really a solution? Learning the alien language word by word is part of the experience, and that’s what it’s all about. The experience is what matters… if you’re dedicated to this game, I suppose. I dropped after 2 days or so.

Either seems very plausible solutions, but then there’s my favourite: move on to something else.

And since I don’t have the desire to deal with it…

People who are dedicated to No Man’s Sky, whether they were introduced to the game at launch when it was mud or after all the updates that, according to whomever, made it good. Say you, what do you think? Does No Man’s Sky deserve a shot, now that it’s “good” (again, according to whoever)?

And what about the languages? Should people dedicate their time to learning it word by word (because that could take a lot of time), or just get a mod online and be done with it?

In addition, I also want to ask linguists if, even theoretically, an alien language applies to humans. It sounds like an interesting theory and maybe a topic that I should’ve brought earlier.

In Conclusion…

In my opinion, It’s nice that No Man’s Sky tried to simulate an actual universe (or was it a galaxy?) by putting in as many planets as possible. That number is 18 quintillion (it’s important to remind how big that number is). But considering how underwhelming it was overall at launch, I wouldn’t recommend it since that’s the only time I was familiar with that game. Of course, the game was apparently “made better” since then, but I haven’t tried it out, so I can’t really say.

I, personally, don’t think that the alien language is applicable, but it needs to be put to theory. Everyone can do what they want with the language, be it mods or actually going planet planet and… yeah. Although I suppose one would prefer to go with mods anyhow since apparently today, everyone plays with mods… except me. There’s just something so appealing about the raw experience of a game, but to each their own, I guess.

Anyways, the alien language is fascinating. But in truth, they didn’t really do anything special with it.