In space, no one can hear you scream. No Man's Sky might have a big open universe to explore, but you're not always welcome. You'll dread these thoughts when you realize you're completely alone, on a dead planet, getting chased by dozens of sentinel drones. These are so many reasons space is so scary here, this game rivals 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of things to be afraid of. Have fun pondering these trying to sleep in your base's bed.
- Some abandoned buildings on planets are overrun with some kind of fleshy, tentacle-laden... things. Most of it is harmless. Some, not so much. And the not-so-dangerous things you can find in those overrun buildings? You will routinely find them outside on the planet's surface. This begs the question of whether those tentacles are part of the natural ecosystem, or The Corruption.
- the NEXT update finally brought an answer to this question and...well, it's not pleasant. To elaborate, the aforementioned not-so-dangerous things are called "Whispering Eggs". Seem harmless at first, right? Well... shoot them with a boltcaster or mining laser and watch as your screen reads "Biological Terror Detected" and the floor near those eggs come alive with green horned aliens that have come for your blood. Sure, the glowing ball that comes from destroying these eggs are valuable, but just remember whose family you're pissing off...
- When exploring abandoned buildings (the kind with the aforementioned humming eggs and biological horrors), the traveler will find terminals with logs inside from other travelers in the past (or possibly, based on the terminal's log access text that states you are a returning user, your own traveler's past). Many of these logs are one-off nightmare-fuel descriptions of horrors the traveler has seen, but occasionally the logs interconnect into a story, such as the three part story of a traveler receiving a mysterious signal:
- In part one, the traveler mentions how s/he's received mysterious transmissions, but couldn't make heads or tails of it until selling some data to a Korvax, who translated the signal. It was a cry for help and warning of danger.
- In part two, the traveler has become obsessed with finding the source of the signal. They deck out their ship with a new and expensive hyperdrive and a cryogenic stasis pod where they can sleep until they reach the source's coordinates.
- In part three, the traveler has landed in a warped and dead planet, and finds a ship that has been completely and unnaturally crushed and twisted by some unfathomable force. Despite the damage, they recognize the particular hyperdrive, and the cryogenic pod inside. They realize it is their ship, and they had been the one calling out for help, and they wonder what this could possibly mean—Then the log cuts off.
- In the same vein as the above, Abyssal Horrors. These underwater monsters only appear when Hadal Cores are harvested. They look like glowing jellyfish, and are very eerie. Worst of all is how they can attack from extremely far away, so even if you're on your way to the surface with your Hadal Core, you're still not safe.
- Quite a few of the planets in the game are very relaxing & friendly to traverse. THESE AREN'T.
- Standing completely alone on a desolate lifeless planet is a very surreal experience. There's no music, no sounds, no other life forms, just the howl of the wind and the occasional Sentinel Drone flying by. Claustrophobia is pretty nasty, but those with agoraphobia (the fear of large open spaces) will have mental breakdowns at the thought of being the only living thing on an entire planet.
- Imagine the above, but with hostile Sentinel Drones that are actively hunting you down. Not only are you the only living thing on the planet, but everywhere you look, there are drones who if they so much as see you, will chase you everywhere you go & will attack as soon as they get too close.
- If you've been in a storm on a planet before, then you might have seen lighting in the distance. So what's so bad about them? They're not backdrops. The lightning can actually hit and damage you. The one saving grace is that they will have markers for where and when they will hit so they can at least be dodged, but it doesn't hide the fact that they're part of what makes some storms truly dangerous.
- On rare occasions, a storm will end up having an occurrence known as "extreme wind event". What this means is that tornadoes will appear and pick up players, potentially throwing them in such a manner that they're killed or massively injured by fall/knockback. One notable example where these tornadoes are especially terrifying is the "Leviathan" expedition; one of the planets, which was already dangerous enough, had extreme wind events randomly occurring, not helped by the fact that getting killed at any point would reset you back to square one (bases and such were left intact), making it a very risky and scary endeavor.
- Quite a few of the things some NPCs will do or want you to do if you interact with them. One of the Korvax entities will ask you to stab yourself in the brain with a syringe to have them upload data into it!
- Knowing you can be attacked by pirates or stumble into a dogfight at any moment when you are flying in space.
- As of the update, you can now hire Technicians to aid you in building and managing your base. Each one has its own series of quests that begin with them happily integrating themselves into your home, but wind up as Paranoia Fuel.
- The first of these, the Overseer, cheerfully claims to have been hired by you in the future and in an alternate timeline to find and aid you in ALL the timelines you meet them. They call you "friend" and give you the directives to find the others and build technician stations for them. However, as their quest progresses they begin revealing a strange resentment towards the player and arguing with themselves when they think the player isn't there. The strange look in their eyes and some of their descriptions imply them to be related to the unknown force monitoring the player, and by the last quest, it is clear that they are a shell of what they once were. If you've been completing the other technician's quests in conjunction, their dialogs imply that the Overseer and whatever force they are working for has corrupted or brainwashed them into staying at the base and serving the player. At the end of the Overseer's main quest-line, they have a repeating quest asking the player to take photos (screencaps) of specific planets so they can enjoy the sights. When spoken to further, they flatly state that they are trapped in that location and will remain trapped there until the end of the cycle, until they are reborn and again find the player in another world.
- The Scientist is a Korvax robot, who has just passed some kind of test that allows them to explore other planets. They are thrilled to find a Traveler and look forward to studying new worlds, but soon after they are inexplicably cut off from the Korvax Hive Mind and ask the player to see why. The reason is that they've had prolonged exposure to you, a Traveler and an anomaly that is some how a corrupting influence that the Korvax don't want infecting the rest of their hive mind. As you run from station to station, attempting to reconnect the Scientist to their fellows, the Scientist goes insane from loneliness and attempts to make its own hive mind by implanting sentience in a beacon device it has you make. Through the quest, it refers to its "child" and the affection and worry it has for it while also worrying about the hive mind. At the end of the quest, you finally return its Korvax Core after having it put through the equivalent of a factory reset, and the Scientist is completely stricken of all its previous personality. It calmly destroys the beacon device "that tried to convince (me) of its love" and gives you the parts to use in an upgrade. It has no memory of anything thats transpired.
- The Gardener is a Gek, like the Overseer, and as with the others, they are thrilled to have been hired on. Unlike the other Gek, the Gardener refuses to be a trader and instead chose a life of producing life, for which it was ostracized by its family. While they initially get along well with the Overseer, near the end of their quest-line they begin having nightmares and they tell the player that the Overseer has been dropping hints that they are unhappy with the Gardener's performance. Later, the Gardener says that the Overseer has asked the Gardener to do SOMETHING, though they do not say what. They only tell the player that they will NOT do whatever the request is, and they promise to "stay (them)self" and stay loyal to the player. After, the Gardener sadly reveals to the player that they have been fired and will be leaving soon. Before they go, they suddenly and desperately tell the player that something is terribly wrong, and that they think the Overseer has been drugging their food. They almost immediately recant and say they were joking. At the end of their quest, they have "decided" to stay on your base with their flowers, despite not being paid. The Overseer is satisfied.
- The Sentinels are creepy in their own right. They will sometimes actively patrol a planet watching for any signs of violations of their laws, meaning that you have to be extremely careful not to piss them off while in their presence. And even though the drones that fly around most often are not that hard to fight, defeating each wave summons increasingly tougher reinforcements including Sentinel Walkers which are the most advanced and dangerous. Even worse is when these Sentinels are labelled as "frenzied" on a given planet, meaning that they will attack on sight. If you don't want to tangle with them, best have cover or your ship ready so you can hide or fly away while they're searching... as long as you stay within the planet's atmosphere and wait until they give up. Fleeing into space while the Sentinels are after you will summon space forces that are a lot harder to escape from. What drives the point home even more is some mentions of Sentinels by items or NPCs; for instance, the Vy'keen Effigy (a wooden sculpture shaped like a Sentinel drone) mentions how it is "used by warriors to enter a temporary trance-like state that eliminates their kind's need for sleep", implying that it makes the user too scared to sleep, and one of the NPCs in the Anomaly asks the player if they know about the Sentinels and says that they want to lay low because of them.
- As of the Interceptor update, the corrupted versions of Sentinels got their very own update. Said update involves adding entire corrupted planets, with bizarre purple crystals sprouting from the ground and corrupted Sentinels wandering around. Some of the aforementioned crystals also have what is essentially the remains of regular Sentinels sticking out of them. What's even worse is that the descriptions of relevant resources, such as Atlantideum, appear to imply that these corrupted Sentinels are actually hosts to a parasitic, seemingly sentient substance...
- "Exotic" type glitch planets are often unsettling on their own (especially the ominous cabled planets). After completing the Artemis Path and learning the truth behind Atlas, these already creepy and atmospheric planets (which are often styled in the way of broken computer parts) become all the more upsetting when you realize that they are a manifestation of Atlas's breakdown.
- On these Exotic planets, the player may run into Boundary Failures: giant technological rings that are spiny and black and have logs inside of them that the player can access. The logs are from the point of view of an AI called Telamon and its dealings with the Atlas. Telamon is supposed to monitor the Atlas for errors and corruption (Rampancy), and the Atlas (who by now is beginning to degrade and corrupt), rewards Telamon by trapping him inside the game with the Player. As the logs progress, Telamon becomes more and more unhinged, to the point where he knows he is inside a game/simulation, feels when the player saves, and desires to become one with the player, leading to some terrifying lines.ANALYSIS: Sometimes I dream of the Traveller.I will wear them, in time.
- On these Exotic planets, the player may run into Boundary Failures: giant technological rings that are spiny and black and have logs inside of them that the player can access. The logs are from the point of view of an AI called Telamon and its dealings with the Atlas. Telamon is supposed to monitor the Atlas for errors and corruption (Rampancy), and the Atlas (who by now is beginning to degrade and corrupt), rewards Telamon by trapping him inside the game with the Player. As the logs progress, Telamon becomes more and more unhinged, to the point where he knows he is inside a game/simulation, feels when the player saves, and desires to become one with the player, leading to some terrifying lines.
- The update known as "Desolation" introduces abandoned freighters. There are no lights on, and there is a similar infection to abandoned buildings on planets. It really gives off Alien vibes. the trailer itself
is also creepy due to the fact that it glitches throughout the trailer. - The Shaihuluda are a type of fauna that has the chance to spawn on just about any world - with the exception of Exotic worlds - including lifeless ones. So, imagine, the player is walking through a world that clearly has no fauna (which is even told to you by the Analysis Visor), and only a few plants interspersed with various mineral rocks, when you feel the ground begin to shake. It grows in intensity until a literal Sand Worm bursts from the ground right in front of the player. The fact that these can't seem to hurt the player does little to mitigate the terror from having a giant, toothy, eyeless monstrosity that is both significantly larger and significantly faster than the player breach the ground right in front of them. If this wasn't enough, they're referred to as "Immortal Worms" in-game, and can't actually be scanned, depriving the player of the comforting satisfaction of having scanned a new animal.
- The endgame reveals that -null- destroyed their own iteration of the universe and killed everyone but themselves in it solely to become immortal. One piece of lore also ends with -null- eating a Mind Ark, with the rest of the entry and their own words during the final confrontation implying it might have been the Mind Arc of their entire universe.
- That glowing orb -null- has for a head? That's their soul, and they intentionally rearranged their form so it would be visible.
- The Gek are easily the most amicable of the three alien races, given their enthusiasm and adorable appearances. Their history on the other hand, is anything but cute. In ancient times, the Gek "First Spawn" were Scary Dogmatic Aliens in every sense of the word, committing genocide on an intergalactic scale - certain in the belief that they were the greatest race in the universe. The First Spawn were finally stopped when their Korvax slaves infected their spawning pools with nanites, replacing the Gek's lust for blood with a lust for money while they were still unborn. All subsequent generations of Gek look upon their history with terrible shame. So much so that any relics of the First Spawn's civilization are considered contraband in all civilized systems.
- Outlaw Stations. You warp into a new system, ready to start exploring, trading and generally making your mark on an impossibly vast galaxy. As you approach the space station on pure muscle memory, you notice that something's...wrong. The outer shell of the facility is heavily damaged and several panels are either dented or hanging off. The light from the hangar is a fiery orange-red instead of the usual ocean blue. As you enter, you quickly find that it looks less like a terminal for space travelers and more like a dimly-lit hideout or black market that is falling apart and held together with elbow grease and makeshift repairs. Welcome to the criminal underworld of the galaxy.
- You may also come across systems labelled "Abandoned". Entering the space station there is a lot more unsettling than an Outlaw Station, because while that one still has people coming and going and there's a thriving community there, abandoned stations are just... completely empty and dark. There's little indication what happened to them before you arrive, leaving it up in the air as to what would cause the station to be left totally empty and alone. There are only vague hints as to what occurred, like damaged plating and funky alien growths scattered around, alongside blood red emergency lighting. Nothing Is Scarier at its finest.
- It should also be noted that, unlike the other variants, Abandoned Stations lack any station core, instead filling the space with an all-consuming darkness; the fact that the biological growth found in them is the same found in planet-based abandoned structures also acts as Paranoia Fuel, since it links abandoned outposts within inhabited systems to whatever cataclysm that caused the mass exodus of the abandoned system...
