It's more sandbox than story, as someone with 300+ hours. The game strings you through some "get x, do y, listen to z" missions and the story overall is kind of neat, but if you're looking for more story it may not be the game for you.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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There’s some story but not much. It’s much more sandbox than narrative. The story is mostly background for the sandbox. There are a few Community Expeditions each year that are additional guided tasks. The rewards are mostly sandbox stuff.
If you’re content with mission type activity—gather these resources; find these things; reach this milestone—then it might be worth the price, especially on sale. It’s cheap anyway.
I’d guess it’s not for you. Maybe, play a friend’s copy?
IMO there is a massive overarching story, if you pay attention
There are a lot of subplots and it all fits into a big picture, again if you follow along. But it does not make you follow along and you can just click click click through the stories or ignore them completely.
I feel like it’s more of a meditation on video games in general. I like it though I’ll admit I don’t ‘get’ all of it.
But, it doesn’t have a distinct narrative like a Fallout, RDR or Breath of the Wild. The player is much more central and the driver and creator of their own narrative.
The story is the main part of those games, indeed. There is a part of the Artemis story where its very much metaphysical or metaphorical telling of breaking the 4th wall and the philosophical questions it should be making you ask yourself. I thought it was ingenious that they changed the story at one point and it was a self reflection of the games history but told from almost truly the mouth of Hello Games devs. I love the game and have since the first day. Because I was under the impression I was going to be a lonely spaceman exploring planets that might never have been touched by any of the NPC's or whatever. Just me and my spaceship exploring the vastness of a random solar system generator. It was the first game that I ever completed 100% on Steam. Getting through the center in the perma death is one of my all time favorite video game experiences. It took YEARS to do that!
In my opinion I recommend elite dangerous with the FPS expansion.
Resource gathering and moment to moment gameplay just felt shallow to me when I tried NMS but I am curious what fans have to say!
I actually have Elite and have spent some time (and had fun!) with it but again I hit that wall of 'But why should I care? Why am I doing this? What is my incentive?' I guess I'm just an exceedingly boring person who has no imagination. :-)
Nah, you just get activated by different things! For me, I like playing multiplayer games because what activates me is the way humans always surprise me, singleplayer shooters even with tons of setpiece cinematic action don't hook me because there isn't that evolving conversation.
If you have gamepass it is on there and you can give it a shot, but its pretty much just a big ass sandbox.
I've only recently really got onto it and I can confidently state you'd probably be better off buying something else. It has a storyline and honestly I really like it, but it's very much a light novel tacked onto a sandbox. I've been drawn to it because it's the closest I'll ever get to playing a robot smuggler in Starwars.
Yeah... I like NMS, but the "story" is a tiny part of it, narrated in a boring way, and not that interesting to begin with.
Appreciate the feedback, I guess I’m just looking for the incentive to actually use all the cool systems the game seems to have.
these people telling you there is no story are not telling you the truth. There are a couple major story lines and if you follow them it will take you many hours to complete