The Long Journey Home: A Forgotten Treasure

Have you ever gone through old stuff in your attic and found an old ball or toy you haven't touched for years, only to start playing with it and realize how fun it actually was? That happened to me a few days ago, except it wasn't an attic of junk I was looking in. Instead, it was my Steam page, and what I rediscovered was The Long Journey Home.

I suspect this is going to be a bit more of an obscure title, so let me explain what it's about. This game, release almost exactly two years ago, pits you as the commander of the Daedalus Project, the first ever FTL flight. It's supposed to be a simple jump to Alpha Centauri and back, but it works too well and slingshots your hapless vessel to a distant region of space. I can name at least a few other games and TV shows that use this basic concept, but as with other games, story cliches don't matter if the gameplay is unique enough. If you want a better explanation, check out a YouTube video from when the game came out (I recommend this one as it shows the tutorial and initial story). I played it for two hours in total when it first came out, then never touched it until I saw a playthrough of it a few days ago and remembered how fun it was. Now I'm addicted and want to write my feelings down about this actually great game.

As you can probably see, we have a very good reason for leaving Earth.

As with games like Rimworld, your success is influenced by who you bring along initially. You choose your starting four crewmembers who each have a unique item to bring. Some are trinkets such as pet plants or laptops, while others are one-use boosts such as space bug repellent or repair kits. They're also fleshed out with distinct personalities via random chatter, and have unique training to help analyze whatever you find in the unknown.

Alessandra the engineer here reveals so much in just a few sentences.

You also choose your ship and lander configuration from three presets, each of which has different storage and hardware capacities. Finally, an ingame seed allows you to set up the universe you'll be playing in, and compare it with other travelers.

Once everything goes wrong a la every sci-fi dealing with experimental FTL drives, it's up to you to survive hostile environments and aliens with a bone to pick (sometimes literally), gather resources, and travel the ~30000 parsecs back to Earth[1].

Probably my favorite part of the game is the piloting. Unlike most other space games, you have to take orbital mechanics into account as you fly across the solar system, though thankfully it handles actual orbiting for you as long as you're close enough. You can even use slingshot maneuvers to save fuel and speed towards distant objects. Once in orbit, you can land on planets to gather the resources you need or even investigate ruins, though beware of hazards such as wind (AKA convection) and earthquakes.

I am going to find a way to include this awesome shot as a sci-fi book cover.

The graphics are also amazing, with a stylized, almost low-poly aesthetic that can be quite realistic and pretty at times. As a result, the aliens and the ships they pilot are just as striking and distinctive (more on them in a bit). Some shots (such as the one on the left) can even look like awe-inspiring sci-fi covers if things work out!

Of course, this part of the universe is far from empty. There are eight alien races you can meet and attempt to appease in various ways... though as a general rule, don't strip mine on their colonies and things will be fine! I found that out the hard way, and got my ship destroyed for it.
Perhaps my favorite are the Ilitza, a race of feminine humanoids. They are extremely decadent slave owners, and talk and act like dominatrices. I even managed to find coordinates to one of their space brothels from a derelict ship. Yeah... that was a thing that happened (sadly, I was too busy laughing as I read to take a screenshot).

If you substituted in an Orion slave girl for this tentacled
feminine humanoid, not much would change.

Of course, there's also the Entrope, the cute little robots who are more than happy to help repair your ship or replace a lander you foolishly destroyed. (Metaphysical side note: are they sentient enough to actually feel happiness? Or is it the same feigned happiness our relatively primitive robots today exhibit? Maybe I should do an analysis of robots from games I play...) The important thing is that none of the races are stock humanoids with ridges or different colored skin (like most "aliens" from Star Trek), and they're all unique and well-developed.

Arguably the only horribly bad thing about the game is the soundtrack. It's not that it's bad (it's in fact very good, though of course I'm a sucker for good soundtracks), it's that to my knowledge there's no way to listen to it outside of the game. There's no DLC for it and I've checked the game files to find the music, and came up with nada. If there is some brave soul who's found the music and uploaded it to YouTube, or if the composer has a sample on his/her site or channel, then do let me know.


So that's my two cents on how I rediscovered The Long Journey Home after two years of ignoring it, and then finding out it's pretty good after I found out what the heck I was actually doing. (Also, I didn't talk about some things such as combat simply because they're not great but they aren't terrible. If I talked about everything in this game, it would be seven paragraphs of "this thing exists, it is okay". And we don't want that, do we?)

[1] Although the exact distance you travel at the start varies between playthroughs, 30,000 parsecs comes out to about 97,486 lightyears. For comparison, the Milky Way is about 100,000 lightyears in diameter, so the ship would either be flung to the other side of the galaxy or just outside it. Of course, the game shows several galaxy/nebula-like sectors as opposed to an image of the Milky Way, but I suppose it's creative license. Maybe they're inside our own galaxy?

Ten Years Already?!

It's nearing the end of 2008, and a crazy young child eagerly turns on his television set to the Discovery Channel. He's into a strange show called The Future is Wild, which he has on DVD but is about to see on television for the first time, having seen its airing on an electronic TV guide. What he doesn't realize is that his life is about to change forever, for alongside this airing is a feature on an upcoming game called SPORE, where the player is able to evolve a creature from a tiny cartoony microbe to a spacefaring civilization. As a creative sort, he is immediately enticed by this and sets out to buy it as soon as possible. It isn't a long or hard wait, for the game comes out on September 7 and he's able to buy it on the weekend of the 13th. Once he boots it up on his computer, everything changes...

In case you couldn't tell, that's the story of how I came to play SPORE. It's hard to believe that it came out ten years today, and that I'm still playing it to an extent (mostly I just wait for anybody to come back and turn Pokemonkab's objectively mediocre creations into equally objective masterpieces). Not only that, but it's still my favorite game of all time because of how much you can do, though there are other games that have and still threaten to usurp that title (recently Rimworld, Stellaris, No Man's Sky, and The Sims 3).

Sadly, the reason that it doesn't feel like ten years since I started playing is because the game has been abandoned since 2011, when EA focused on Darkspore, which in my honest opinion is unworthy of having "Spore" in its title. Coincidentally, that's also the year I  began Spore the Next Level, with its many eye-gouge-out-inducing Artemis Fowl crossovers and the foundations of the Revolution Universe (though that wouldn't come into being until 2013).
Although EA has since discontinued updating the game, it is still supported by the amazing MaxisBazajaytee (PRAISE HIM), the servers are still online (though sometimes feel like they're being held together by duct tape and bubble gum), and plenty of talented creators are still making awesome creations that deserve their place on the MPN list. Unfortunately, the MPN Adventures list is a mess since any adventure that gets at least one play gets on there, although I have seen a few good ones here and there recently. Contrary to popular belief, the game isn't dead yet!

What Could Have Been

Thinking how long it's been since EA left Spore to wither makes me wonder what it would be like in a parallel universe where Spore was supported to the present day. By now we'd be on Spore 2 or 3, and the original game would have gotten quite a few expansion packs. The one true expansion we did get, Galactic Adventures, was simply amazing and made the game so much better, so one wonders how good future ones would have been. Presumably, we would've gotten the promised Aquatic Stage that a few people still clamor for to this very day, 13 years after Will Wright's presentation at GDC. However, the possibilities of alternate universe expansions are as endless as the game itself:

• A Planet/Solar System editor like GA's Adventure Creator, only inside Core Spore (perhaps part of an endgame God Stage)?
• A recent browsing of SporeWiki for ideas mentioned a cut "Terraforming Stage" that has nothing to do with the Space Stage; rather, it's in between the Civilization and Space Stage and sees your species attempting to reverse the effects of climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation you produced trying to conquer the world.
• I've always wanted to have more exploration/depth of your solar system. Currently, it's always the same configuration (in no particular order): a yellow star with a barren world, a gas giant, a T1 world with a crashed ship, and a your homeworld with a barren moon (sometimes a strange Cube Planet). You always visit the T1 planet, scan said ship, go to a neighboring system, and leave your home system behind FOREVER. This is fine because there's not much there, but I've always wanted to have an intermediate Solar Stage where you explore neighboring planets, colonize them, and make your way to inventing FTL travel.
• Patches to fix various annoying bugs, especially the one where the oceans disappear on planets you've terraformed (I worked hard on that!) and an outfit-replacing glitch with the Hologram Scout and GA that makes it literally unusable.
• More exploration of planets. Although the Hologram Scout has always existed (though, as menntioned, GA makes it impossible to use) and GA let you beam down to certain adventure planets, I think it'd be cool to send away teams to any planet's surface with allied ships on "foot" or in a vehicle. You could even have extras who wear red shirts and get killed to prove how dangerous said planet is and what a terrible mistake you've made!
• More parts packs like Creepy and Cute and the infamous Bot Parts that add interesting and wacky ways to create new creatures.
• Something completely out of left-field that radically changes the game like GA did.

In conclusion, it's been a long ten years and so much has changed. Unfortunately, Spore hasn't been able to change ever since EA/Maxis abandoned it, and it's a shame because there's so much that could've been done to fix the game and make awesome new expansion packs. In two years, No Man's Sky went from terrible and boring to amazing thanks to post-release support; after two years, Spore was practically abandoned in favor of the inferior Darkspore... which I will always blame for "killing" Spore.

(Speaking of No Man's Sky, I'm not going to delve into the similarity between the pre-release hype and release day disappointment between the two games. At least not yet.)

In any case, let's wish a happy decennial anniversary to my favorite game, one that shaped me into who I am for better or worse.

No Man's Sky: The NEXT Leap Forward

Le Recap

Flash back for a moment to the summer of 2016: The United States was not yet in control of an idiotic dictator, the Olympics were going on in Brazil, and I was still producing Spore the Next Level². In the midst of all these events, there was one game on everyone's minds: No Man's Sky, seemingly the most awesome space exploration game that had been and ever would be, offering quintillions of procedurally-generated worlds to explore. In the middle of August, it finally came out... only for humanity's collectively high expectations to be unfulfilled.

The general reaction to No Man's Sky when it released two years ago.

As for me, I had no interest in the game and nothing but contempt for the spam of hype it generated on the Internet, so I was somewhat glad when people didn't keep talking about it. In fact, as many of you may know, I made a joke post on this very blog that alleged the game was part of a sinister world domination conspiracy, only to realize that the game was okay upon seeing quill18 (my personal favorite Youtuber) play it. I kept thinking about getting it, but the high price ($60 USD) always turned me away since I didn't have a reliable source of income.

At release, the game was near-universally scorned for not living up to the hype of the advertising and hype it generated (which I never saw save for a Stephen Colbert segment, so I can't and don't make any judgments about said advertising), especially when it came to multiplayer and seeing other explorers in the game. Epithets like "No Man's Lie" and "No Man's Buy" became all the rage, and judging by some people's over-the-top reactions you'd think that the developers (Hello Games) murdered a hospital's worth of unborn babies. They did not, and continued developing the game, adding new features such as base building, vehicles, photo mode, better graphics and owning the colossal freighters you can find in outer space. Despite that, the game flew mostly under my radar over time and I stopped thinking about buying it completely and regarded it as a cautionary tale of hype and high expectations.

A year later (or a year ago, funny that), I rediscovered the game when Hello Games pushed out a new update, Atlas Rises, adding in (among many other things) rudimentary multiplayer where you can see people as "ghosts", reworked progression, and a subplot to the game's main story. Having heard far more positive things about it and discovering it was on sale for under $25, far more affordable than its usual price and a better reflection of its quality, I decided to finally give No Man's Sky a try. Another reason I bought it was Starbound's 1.3 update catastrophically broke several mods I was using, and No Man's Sky helped scratch the itch for space games I had. Although fun for about a month, I felt it was still rather lacking in some areas, a bit boring and repetitive, and was burdened by its failed hype campaign a year previously. Once I figured out how to fix Starbound, I went back to playing that that and left No Man's Sky behind for good... or so I thought...

Another Year, Another Update

Following a pattern of attracting my attention with new updates and then disappearing under my radar, No Man's Sky came back into my life two weeks ago with the update simply titled NEXT, an update that finally added the promised multiplayer, the ability to see your character and interact with others, and an overhaul of crafting and progression. In complete contrast to the release version, NEXT has drawn a significant influx of positive reviews, with some praising it as a "redemption story" and leading one fan to create a colossal monument of lead developer Sean Murray that's visible from space in the same way the Great Wall of China isn't.

The two features from the patch notes that finally drew me in were a rework to base building that allows you to have multiple bases across planets and systems like Starbound (previously, you could only have one base on a single planet) and planetary rings that make planets stand out and look sci-fi-y (yes, that's a thing now). I went in and found the game to be indeed much better than what I'd played a year previously, and since then I've been having tons of fun. The game feels more organic and complete in a way that's hard to describe; perhaps because interlinked systems come together and just work.

Is the game perfect? No, there are some performance issues, graphical bugs I've noticed, and I don't think it's worth the $60. However, as mentioned before, I do think it has substantially improved in many ways. I'll list some of the highlights I've found the best alongside cool photos I've taken:

• Space combat feels far easier than in Atlas Rises, where I kept getting hammered by space pirates and needed to be a pacifist. Now, flying your ship feels smoother and the pirates are much less threatening. I've actually grown to like space combat a lot to the point where I'll be a space mercenary and accept contracts to blow the suckers into the sky.
• A feature added in Atlas Rises was the ability to own multiple starships when you managed to get the millions of units (the game's currency) needed to buy off a freighter captain. Now you have access to this immediately for free, allowing you to purchase a wide range of ships. Specializing them for combat, hauling, or exploring is encouraged.

• Speaking of freighters, owning them is now as easy as answering a distress call and fighting off a pirate raid on one of them. Granted, you'll have to fight waves of enemy ships to get it for free, but as I mentioned space combat is now easier and more fun, so this wasn't a problem for me.
• Alongside freighters are support frigates, large ships you can send off to the corners of the galaxy on specialized expeditions. My freighter started with a trade vessel (upper middle of the photo to the right) that I've successfully sent off on two lucrative trade missions that progressed over an hour of real time and gave me untold thousands of units. Additionally, you can recruit more frigates of various specializations via cash like with new ships, though they can be quite pricey. It makes you feel more like a ship commander and can be a good way to earn money and/or kill time on your adventures.
• Resources have been reworked, and you'll need to refine and craft a lot more to get valuable items such as thruster fuel for take off, "chromatic metal" that has several uses, and pure ferrite for base building. Although it's harder to get what you need, the old system always felt a bit too easy, plus it makes things a bit more interesting.
• You've always been able to find free crashed ships at the price of your old one and whatever it
  
  had in it, but since Atlas Rises (I think) you need to repair their inventory slots with your hard-earned units. Now you'll need tons of resources to fix said slots and make your ship fully-armed and operational, making you feel like a car hobbyist repairing an antique automobile. I'm still in the process of repairing my Pride of Sutikh hauler ship, which still requires a lot of magnetized ferrite, chromatic metal, and tech modules to restore it to its old glory.
• The best part about the NEXT update is the reworked graphics. In the release version, everything had an ugly pea soup hue to it which I never liked and made things uninteresting. Now the game feels a lot more vibrant, colorful, and attractive, helped by the addition of full volumetric clouds and even rings to the skies of planets.
• As I mentioned earlier, there is now a fully-integrated multiplayer where you can meet others, team up with them, or even be a big jerk. I'm not a big fan of multiplayer personally, but I do like the idea of it, especially since it prompted the addition of...
• Character customization! Prior to NEXT, you lacked a character model and thus there was no ability to know who or what you were (although I always assumed the player was a human). You start off as an astronaut in an orange suit, but via a space station module you can become a burly Vy'keen warrior, a small Gek trader, a robotic Korvax, or a strange Traveler*. I stuck with the "Anomaly" astronaut look, but donned a cool helmet (complete with gold visor to protect against solar exposure) and a slick blue suit.
• *It should be noted that the game's developers are British and spell it as "Traveller". However, for this blog, I prefer to use American spellings since that's what I'm most familiar with and what my spellchecker prefers. 
• Planets still aren't as varied as they could be when it comes to flora and fauna, but nevertheless come in enough interesting combinations of colors, water levels, and KILLER DEATH SENTINELS to look different. I've come to accept that the problem of low variety is a with the concept of procedural generation in general and not No Man's Sky. It's not so bad with artificial constructs like buildings and ships, but with creatures it's an issue since scanning and naming them is a big part of progression, albeit less so in NEXT since money is not as big of a reward as it was unless you get scanner upgrades.
• As mentioned before, bases can now be built on any planet provided you have the resources to build a base computer to claim the area. In Atlas Rises, you could only build a single base in a flat predetermined area on one planet. Now, a base computer allows you to set up shop anywhere in a vast array of landscapes, such as on an island on a verdant planet like I did. I can't stress enough how appealing this is to someone as creative as myself, to the point I'm thinking about starting a game on Creative Mode just to check out cool planets and build equally cool bases on them.

In Summation

Despite being buggy, boring, not much to look at, and lacking at release, No Man's Sky has benefited from continued support over the last two years and has become an excellent (albeit still imperfect) space game that is currently one of my most-played on Steam. A special thanks must go to Hello Games for persevering and supporting the game despite the vitriolic criticisms at release, rather than simply shrugging and deciding "that's it, we made a game that sucks, let's try something else". The graphics, crafting, base building, and multiplayer are now far better than anything before in this game, and I can confidently say that NEXT is a tremendous improvement that makes the game what it should've been two years ago. (Although, have they ever heard of beta/early access?)

Starbound Lore: The USCM, Old and New

Welcome to a new regular (I hope) series on this blog, where I share my headcanon and speculations regarding the lore of one of my most favorite games, Starbound. The game already has a rich and expansive lore in it, but sometimes some things are underdeveloped or fall through the cracks.

We'll start things off in an interesting way with something from mods, the 1.3 update, and the beta days of yore: the USCM.

The Good Old Days

I have been playing and enjoying the expansive Frackin' Universe mod (FU for short) for almost a year at the time of writing. In addition to adding things such as new weapons, planets, resources, and dungeons, a feature often not mentioned is that it (or some other mod it consumed along the way) adds back content that was cut from the game for some reason or another. The most prevalent are old dungeons, such as the atmospherically-pleasing Floran Hell (which is probably the only actual dungeon) and my personal favorite, the USCM Bunker.

Originally from Starbounder

Anybody who played the beta for prolonged periods will immediately remember this dungeon, filled with quirky robots, military personnel logs, pulse rifles, and soldiers who wanted to kill you for some reason. I fondly remember stumbling upon one on a frozen moon and not knowing how to go down it without removing all the platforms (I didn't know the "S" key would move you downwards). As I mentioned, it always was my favorite, and I was very sad when it was removed in 1.0 when the Terrene Protectorate was introduced and did away with the human lore and the USCM.

By now, anyone not familiar with pre-release Starbound will be wondering what the USCM actually was. The United Systems Colonial Marines was essentially humanity's military; other than that, little was described of it in the game's lore--so expect some speculation from here on out. It's reasonable to assume it was charged with protecting the human race and the planet Earth before the Great Tentacle Corruption destroyed the latter and exiled the former out into space. After that, it probably adopted an isolationist policy and set up penal colonies on remote worlds to deal with escaping criminals (who later rioted, killed the guards, and took control). These penal colonies also were untouched by the 1.0 update and kept around while the bunkers were removed, making things a little confusing.

As I mentioned, these bunkers were restored in Frackin' Universe or a mod it incorporated, but no changes were made to the lore surrounding them (in fact, an update in mid-2017 actually restored the old lore logs you could find) or interactions/relations with the Terrene Protectorate. I filled that plot hole in by still assuming the USCM was a military organization that later joined with the Protectorate to protect and patrol its space (i.e. Earth/ the Sol system), and everything was great... until v. 1.3 came.

Everything Changed When 1.3 Attacked

The inside of a derelict USCM freighter.

Version 1.3 made a major overhaul to the space aspect of the game by adding modular mechs, anomalies for said mechs to explore, a new navigation system, and breaking some very critical mods for my game. While I waited for these mods to update, I decided to take a look at some of the new stuff coming in 1.3 on the wiki. As it turned out, one change was that derelict USCM ships could now be found as anomalies... but they weren't the USCM from the beta. Now called the Universal Space Corporate Military, they were apparently a profit-seeking bunch specializing in weapons research and gaining resources through military means. After unprecedented mutinies (and subsequent exiles to prisons), financial losses, and a disastrous bioweapons project that was sabotaged by apes, it was disbanded many years prior to the start of the game and its former members turned to space piracy. 

Naturally, it's impossible to reconcile these profiteers with the gung-ho beta/FU-restored USCM of old for multiple reasons (although without FU, the new USCM works to a degree). After trying to see how they could be the same, I have recently decided they are indeed different... to a degree. Here's what I think happened...

A History of the USCM

As humanity began to use FTL travel and set forth from the planet Earth, an increasing number of corporations decided to use this new technology to mine planets for resources and profit, as well as trade with the other races inhabiting the galaxy. Unfortunately, these traders found themselves beset by pirates, both alien and human. In addition, corporate miners often needed protection from the horrific monsters occupying many resource-laden planets. The initial solution to these problems was to hire mercenaries to protect ships and miners, but eventually it became too expensive and started digging into profits.

However, some corporations did manage to get enough funding to start their own private militias, and these would eventually merge into the Universal Space Corporate Military, or USCM. This independent military service initially pledged itself to protect its sponsors and their assets from harm, whether from space pirates or aliens. Their starships were state-of-the-art for the era, and their soldiers had years of military background.
This continued for decades until the sponsor corporations went bankrupt or otherwise became less dependent on the USCM for protection. The hardy personnel of the USCM decided to strike it out on their own and become independent of Earth, even developing aspirations to expand humanity's reach beyond their home planet and the Protectorate. Like the corporations they once sponsored, the USCM became obsessed with the pursuit of profit and exploiting whatever their ships and soldiers came across, no matter how dangerous it might be.

After a few years of success, the USCM began to face serious difficulties with money and personnel. Disgruntled soldiers began to mutiny and turn to space piracy to do what the USCM could not, prompting the establishment of penal colonies  on remote worlds to both detain mutineers and keep everyone else in line. Around this time, the Miniknog took notice of the USCM and its nature, and began making preparations to eliminate it before it could threaten their interests. They decided to destroy it from within by entering into a research agreement to develop bioweapons to raid ships with. The final design, Project Parasprite, ended in disaster for the USCM as several prototypes "accidentally" got loose and killed everyone aboard. Finally, lack of personnel and funding prompted the organization's disbanding, though its abandoned starships and mutinied soldiers still can be found in remote systems today.

The wider galaxy assumed this was the end of this troublesome group of humans, but in fact it was an opportunity for them to turn over a new leaf. Surviving generals came together and proposed the foundation of a new USCM, devoted more to military service and defense rather than profit. Now calling itself the United Systems Colonial Marines, it pledged to defend all worlds and systems with a significant human presence. The new USCM managed to catch the attention of the Terrene Protectorate, and it wasn't long before negotiations began. Eventually, the USCM agreed to function as a security division of the Protectorate. While most high-ranking USCM personnel did establish a command post on Earth, the vast majority of the USCM's forces were deployed to bunkers and bases established on remote worlds, for rapid response and to allow it to continue functioning in the event that something happened to Earth.
This did indeed occur when the ancient might of The Ruin was unleashed upon Earth, crippling the Protectorate and killing untold billions. With the landscape of the galaxy massively changed, the USCM outposts became highly isolationist until USCM leadership could be located and devise a plan on what to do next.

Final Thoughts

That's my little write-up on the USCM and the reconciliation between its beta/FU and 1.3 versions. One notion I came up with is that the beta takes place after version 1.0, since the Protectorate doesn't exist and the USCM is the sole representation of the human race.

Regarding the lore itself, there probably are some things I overlooked and forgot about. I suppose that's okay since this was never meant to be the definitive account and just my personal speculation/headcanon. Feel free to make your voice heard.

Next time: Who actually runs the Letheia Corporation?

Do Not Become One of THEM

UPDATE 1: After this post, I took a look at No Man's Sky and have had a change of heart regarding the game. It's actually quite a nice little game, and I... actually like the look and feel of it. Nevertheless, I'll leave this post up so you can see what my ramblings are like.

UPDATE 2 (8/12/2017): Well, now I've gone and bought the game one year later. Over the past year, I've maintained a detached and critical on the game and learned a bit more about its overhyped-ness and why it turned many off (mostly it's a lack of multiplayer, but the thing is I almost NEVER play multiplayer anyways), but I think the three updates over the past year have made it significantly more playable. Plus, I managed to get it on sale for under $25 so I won't have wasted quite as much if (and possibly when) I decide I don't like it, and I've been looking for a good space exploration game since Starbound 1.3 broke the mods I had installed and rendered it unplayable.

(If you want to see videos on said updates, check out Scott Manley's videos here.)

Now, here's my original post:

If you are a modern Internet-using human of the 21st century, you are right now almost certainly aware of two things:

1. Donald Trump is a moron who wants to nuke the world, yet nobody's doing anything to stop him
2. There's this game called No Man's Sky

The first one doesn't matter to me so much (mostly because politics are like sausage, in that it's best not to get into it unless it's your line of work), so let us discuss the second thing that's more pertinent to this blog. No Man's Sky is a game that promises to let players explore a realistically-scaled galaxy and harvest its contents. I am here to tell you that there is one reason not to play it: it is part of an insidious world domination ploy.

The perpetrators of this plot is an enigmatic agency that has no official name and denies its existence, so let's just refer to them as THEM. THEIR goal is to topple all existing governments and create a New World Order with THEMSELVES in charge in their places. THEY are believed to have existed for centuries, lurking in the shadows until the technology to allow THEM to achieve this goal is developed. Sadly, No Man's Sky is that technology.

Using subliminal messages hidden throughout the game, THEY intend to lull players of No Man's Sky into supporting THEIR cause, effectively becoming THEIR sleeper agents. When the time is just right, THEY will activate their sleeper agents and use them to cause enough chaos to seize control of the entire world.

Obviously, this is a bad thing. In fact, it's even worse than the dystopia that could follow Donald Trump's ascension (not that that'll happen IMHO). Thankfully, the way to avoid this is simple: do not play No Man's Sky. If you do not play it, then THEY cannot enslave you and use you to further THEIR insidious plot.

Thank you, that is all. Just remember: don't fall for THEIR tricks!

Also, just to be safe, don't mess with Fallen Empires, unless you like a highly-advanced
civilization that has existed for millennia wiping the floor with you with ringworlds
and tachyon lances.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, this page is a huge joke poking fun at the hype surrounding No Man's Sky as well as those darned conspiracy theorists who seriously believe that Obama/Queen Elizabeth/[insert world leader here] is a lizard in disguise attempting to seize power for their alien lizard overlords or that the moon landings never happened (the latter of which is definitely false, the former almost certainly false). In reality, I don't hate No Man's Sky as much as I think it's over-hyped, and personally I'm not all that interested in it. Sure, a realistic galaxy to explore with all sorts of animals and plants and planets is a very interesting idea, but there are other games that have done this to varying degrees; some of which I feel are superior. I might be pressured to try the game if I think it's interesting enough, but I probably won't cover it on this blog.
(Let's face it, once I had a similar opinion about Stellaris, but now it's easily one of my new favorite games!)
(You can almost certainly expect me to link THEM to Overwatch, though, 'cause that game is not only bizarre but also bizarrely over-hyped, exponentially so compared to No Man's Sky. Also, as far as I know, it has nothing to do with space).