An in-depth look at Space Exploration in video games

Space… the final frontier... for humanity and game developers both, apparently.

0:00 - Introduction
2:02 - The History of Space Exploration
16:55 - Space Exploration in Modern Times
26:48 - Starfield
40:47 - No Man's Sky
53:32 - Elite Dangerous
1:24:43 - The Final Frontier

First song is the Blue Danube Waltz. Other songs you might be looking for are probably various versions of David Bowie's Space Oddity, Life on Mars and Starman. Or maybe Rocket Man.

[BloodRider]

Wow, I can't believe that NeverKnowsBest made a video that's only the length of a single average feature film. I was starting to believe that he'd never return to short form content.

[gniccolai]

A few things you may have not noticed about Elite Dangerous.
1. You can visit the Capital systems of several in-game faction (Sol, Achenar, Sirius and others) when you gain enough faction standing with them.
2. The skybox is real. Once I was at Barnard's star (20 LY from Earth), and noticed a set of stars that looked like the Orion Belt; then looked a bit better and noticed that was indeed the Orion constellation. If you fly to that region, you'll see how stars look like from that position, and everything in around 2-3K ly from Earth is NOT (completely) generated; most of the stuff comes from real astronomical data.
3. Because of how hyperspace jump works, doubling jump range more than halves travel time. Even relatively basic ships you could certainly afford in the video may have increased your travel distance by about 3 times.
4. Neutron star and white dwarf jets overcharge the hyperdrive, giving you about 3 times you jump range for one jump. There are a few notable "neutron star highways", that further help cutting down travel time around the galaxy.
5. With all the upgrades and following a neutron-star route, you can have jump ranges of 200-300ly.
Still, getting to Sagittarius* takes easily a couple of days.

[delamoxica]

If you ever play Elite again try going way "above" or "below" the galactic plane and just watch the stars slowly disappear with every jump until the only one you can see is the one you jumped in from, it's a bit eerie

[дигл_лайв]

The story of a spaceship commander who winged and cheated his way into his position because he was so excited for space exploration, got some initial lucky success, only to get lost in the middle of nowhere with no fuel and shooting himself out of hopelessness is very cool, and I think says a lot about what space exploration actually is compared to what it is made to seem like by media.

[Hero_Of_Old]

The voice of Neverknowsbest is the sound of a cosy, crisp evening. Wind lashing at the window as I rest my weary head in the dark and listen.

[Vandreren]

I haven't watched the video yet, but I just wanted to thank you, NeverKnowsBest, for continuing to make these videos. I know you said a while back that you weren't sure if you wanted to continue because of a variety of reasons. I always enjoy listening to your videos, and once my financial situation has stabilized a bit more I will certainly make sure to throw some of that surplus over to your patreon. Hope you are doing great!

[Android]

Elite Dangerous is seriously special. For all it’s problems, no game has ever done “space” the justice this game does. I have a hard time playing now a days, but those first 200 hours were immaculate

[Arganoid]

Very good video. I worked on Elite Dangerous in the early days, first half of 2013. I was involved with collecting star data and figuring out how the ingame factions would be placed, based on their home star systems from the previous game (whose galaxy map was much less accurate) and the real life star positions. The stars were quite inconveniently positioned in real life.

[fareflight]

1:19:42 This isn't entirely true. You can visit the Sol system and it's decently well detailed, but you need a Federation superpower rank of Petty Officer to get the permit to go there. I wouldn't expect you to learn that though because you can only really find that out on the wiki lol.

[TheGregoryodd]

When I sit and think about the original Elite, it blows my mind that they got so close to the ideal so early

[rempha]

In Elite Dangerous you have head lights and night vision to help in dark places.

[jacknixon]

the world in No Man's Sky is built up around the story. Everything is simulated right down to the player character, who's sole purpose in life is to experience the world the Atlas built. So it kind of makes sense to me that the game feels safe, as it is an experience meant for appreciation, wrapped in the fabric of a space game

[Manleydanley]

Randomly finding a wrecked Thargoid ship while driving around on a planet was one of the coolest and terrifying things I've experienced in a game. I can't describe how big and intimidating it was. The fact that I wasn't expecting anything at all just made it so much more exciting.

[Jonoridge]

Outer Wilds is peak space exploration, discovery and storytelling. When another game comes along that comes close to capturing the magic that that game has please let me know.

[thefinnishchamp]

I personally prefer a game series like Mass Effect, that doesn't let you explore the universe but is very good at making you feel like said universe exists.

Space exploration is just too hard to do because of the scale necessary

[MagicAccent]

Elite Dangerous is still the best "space sim". It captures the vastness of space, the oppressive feel of the void just outside the canopy, while still having pleasant space trucking and at least some on foot gameplay. It's the closest to the sim dream so far.

Also, you have a night vision mode, but the game doesn't tell you 🤡

[tj-cogo]

Problem is that Morrowind feels more otherworldly location than Starfield. They should have stuck to fewer planets, and made more weird places, races and flora and fauna

[j.d.]

I think the irony with Star Citizen is that the things it keeps getting criticized for are what make it resemble space exploration more than any other game.
An impossibly massive and never-ending project, shooting for the stars, getting there step by step and when zoomed out it seems like it didn't actually get anywhere yet, but when you zoom in it is filled with amazing stuff.

[WaterGaming]

In No Man's Sky, they have redone the entire universe! The newest update, "Worlds Part 1" they have made more fauna, minerals, and flora, as well as more enemies. The vile brood isn't as big of a bad as sentinels, but they are nice to fight. They also have redone some UI, and made Walkers have boss bars. Not only that but the Space Stations have been redone too after this video! They have more variations. The buildings are still repetitive, but they have done a great job revamping!

[archaeologistify]

19:03 THANK YOU for mentioning Space Engineers! Many critics that look at the space genre will talk about the nichest of games completely missing this giant in the space sandbox genre. The developers are fully independent with their CEO owning 100% of the company making Space Engineers which is to this day so successful it's funding their other companies including AI development. It's been my main game since 2014 and just recently I've been flying around the moon on one of the EU servers where I've discovered a wreck of a base. I looked around inside the old underground ruin made by a long-gone player faction with a couple people still inside their cryo chambers. I found a long tunnel leading under the base which was likely how the attacker reached the reactor to disable the base defenses. It was among the best exploration moments I've had in any space game.