Maybe you want a better ship with a little more range, or more fuel to help you get that little bit further. Best venture over to one of the many trading posts, and see if you can barter with one of the civilised alien races that populate the universe - though, first, you're going to have to learn to speak their language, your understanding enhanced by interacting with monoliths that are scattered across planets.



There are races and factions, traders and pirates and organisations with which allegiances can be formed. Find yourself in the depths of space riding alongside a flotilla of freighter ships when a pirate attacks, and you'll find that convoy comes to your aid - or, alternatively, you could open fire yourself on the cargo holds that bulge out until they explode, gathering up some of that loot for yourself. An ally lost, a hold full of carbon gained; it's a vast space that No Man's Sky offers, but it's underpinned by a framework that's sturdy, perhaps even familiar.



This is a universe with its own lore, and a deeper sense of purpose for the player that's slowly revealed through exploration. It's perhaps the biggest revelation of this latest round of media previews (perhaps the last before No Man's Sky's release in June) that this universe of some 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets is bound together by a fiction and governed by a narrative logic. It seems like a smart way to impose some of the structure that so many players crave.