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The 9 weirdest No Man’s Sky discoveries so far
Nobody saw these things getting procedurally-generated, we’ll say that much.
No Man’s Sky
© Hello Games
The most wonderful thing about space exploration game No Man’s Sky is that despite enormous hype surrounding it, those sensational numbers, and the fantastic 65daysofstatic soundtrack, when you sit down to play it, the universe is still yours. All the spoilers in the world can’t spoil the No Man’s Sky universe when there are so many planets that even your children’s children’s children will be planting poles on new rocks inside the game and shouting dibs.
Hello Games created the tagline “your universe awaits" for good reason, as the procedurally-generated nature means that, in theory, everyone should find something unique. Still, if you are going to give an infinite amount of monkeys an infinite amount of typewriters, you can expect a lot of weird and wonderful ramblings before that volume of the complete works of Shakespeare. Some of the outposts uncovered so far in No Man’s Sky have been a tad... odd, to say the least. To honour these momentous acts of randomised madness, we took to the internet in an expedition of our own, and have rounded up the weirdest discoveries so far for your perusal.
Star Wars Ewoks
It seems inevitable really, given how everyone's favourite movie series from their childhood is fantastic again (thanks, The Force Awakens!), but user Greenskull certainly seems to have discovered something that brings Star Wars to mind, having found a close cousin of the Ewoks.
At barely over a metre tall, these curious rabbit-eared creatures certainly seem to share the skittish nature of the fearsome yet cuddly Star Wars characters, though the AI routine for them does appear to be closer to "run around in circles" than it does “take down an AT-AT”.
Nonetheless, we wish we'd met them on our travels across the universe. No doubt when we stumble on something similar, they'll treat us like Storm Troopers and greet us with the sharp ends of their spears.
Glitch or intentional weirdness?
This planet is straight up bizarre, to the point that we're not sure if this is a ramification of the world being procedurally-generated, or some kind of glitch.
10Phoenix01 seems convinced it's the product of a bug, but what if it's just an underwater planet that he's accidentally landed on for the first time, and not known how to cope with it?
We know you can craft technology that lets you breath underwater, so that would remove the panic and let him calmly explore. Okay, it's probably a glitch, but the fact that this kind of thing can happen and the game doesn't just crash or explode, and thus explode the shared universe for millions of other players in the process, is fairly impressive on its own.
Miniature giraffe-onyx-planthead thing
Look, we're aware it's customary to come up with a pithier title for a sub-heading in an article, but the power of Hello Games' algorithms leaves us without any better words for this. We don't really know where to begin with this thing. It's like somebody overfed a sea cucumber, then gave it to the creators of Human Centipede to do with as they please. It has the skin of a giraffe, but the body of an onyx, and its head is a weird plant like object.
Then, somehow, the player feeds it. How? Where is it ingesting food through? No Man's Sky is a technical marvel, but this is the kind of thing that has people shouting, "nuke it from space" in the streets because it's so strange. Avoid this thing, we just don't trust it.
Animal, vegetable or mineral?
This might well need filing under the glitch category again, but we can't work out what's happening here. On first glance it looks like some kind of plant having a seizure, but the player calls it a creature, saying it's "gone mad." We don't want to be the one suggesting it, but what if this is some kind of mating ritual? Even famed presenter and naturalist David Attenborough would struggle to put this one into context, that's for sure.
The Bee Gee
Look at the cocksure strut on this monkey-cross-rat. This may only be a short clip, but we'd love to go on a night out with this lad. Full on prance-mode, he knows what he likes, and he likes what he knows. This little dude is obviously singing as he swaggers his way round whatever planet this is. It's clearly hiding an iPod somewhere and is singing, "you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk." The king of cool. Fair play
A T-Rex with wings
Now we're talking. This player has found Jurassic World and isn't afraid to stand there looking at huge, hulking dino-like creatures. The truly crazy thing about this discovery is that the creature on show looks as though it has some kind of wings. Can it fly? If so, we welcome our new Triassic-era overlords, and will bow to the great Dinosauriformes in the sky. Thankfully, this brave player has clearly played Ark: Survival Evolved, so attacks the dino, only to discover it's peace loving, and he or she may have just killed one of the last of its kind. But hey, at least they got 20 Heridium out of it.
Underwater base
Every planet in No Man's Sky is enormous. Seriously, we've spent three hours on the smallest moon we can find, and not even come close to picking it dry. Each planet is almost bigger than Tamriel's Skyrim. Now we find out that you can find underwater bases, our minds have been blown further. We're familiar with over 30 words in the alien language of Gek, but who is in this subaquatic station, and what're they doing? The less said about the bizarre greenish yellow thing surrounding the inside of the base, the better. Looks like you'll need to craft an extended oxygen tank to fully explore it, too, as this player drowns before escaping the briny depths.
A black hole
A joy of No Man's Sky is that you can approach the universe at your own pace – no hardcore players can spoil it for you by racing through to the end, because there isn't one. Travelling through space can bring up planets that can take hours to approach if you choose to just float slowly towards them. But imagine jumping out of hyperspace and seeing a black hole right in front of you. Would you explore it? Would you avoid it? We'll leave it to you as to whether you spoil what happens whacking play on the clip above. As for us? We're off to explore our universe, and we suggest you do the same.
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