‘No Man’s Sky’ Trophies Are Out, And Several Reference Works Of Science Fiction


No Man’s Sky trophies have been revealed. Exophase published a list of the game’s 23 honors. Most of the awards listed make reference to works of literary and cinema science fiction. It seems fitting that the designers at Hello Games would pay tribute to the stories that inspired a game of such epic proportions.

Some of the references are plainly evident. For example, “A Space Odyssey,” which requires the player to achieve “Discoverer” status in “Space Exploration,” is a clear nod to Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The novel and the movie came out together in 1968 as a joint effort between Clark and director/producer/screenwriter Stanley Kubrick. Another interesting thing to note is that 2001 was based on some of Clark’s short stories, one of which was titled “The Sentinel.” The main protagonists in No Man’s Sky are called Sentinels, yet another nod to Clark. There is also a gold trophy called “The Sentinel” for attaining “Everlasting” status in the “Longest Lifespan” progression.

Another apparent science fiction reference in the No Man’s Sky trophies is the bronze trophy “A Scanner Darkly.” This award is a clear call-out to the Phillip K. Dick novel of the same name. The book, published in 1977 and set in 1994, dealt heavily with the theme of drug use. It seems appropriate that the player must get to “Naturalist” status in the “Uploaded Discoveries” category to gain this trophy.

Some of the No Man’s Sky trophy names are a bit more obscure. “Who Goes There?” is a silver cup that is a direct reference to the title of the John Wood Campbell Jr. novella, which inspired John Carpenter’s movie, The Thing. To get the trophy, the player must achieve the status of “Diplomat” in “Alien Colonist Encounters.”

Patterns of Conquest is a 1949 novel by George O. Smith about humans who infiltrate an alien race in an attempt to conquer them. No Man’s Sky has a trophy by the same name for becoming “Notorious” in “Ships Destroyed.”

One of the most obscure trophy names is “Total Perspective Vortex,” and it is the top award in the game. For fans of Douglas Adams, this may be an obvious one.

However, Destructoid wrote, “You just need total vortex perspective [sic] to get No Man’s Sky’s platinum trophy … Whatever that means. It’s called ‘Total Vortex Perspective’ [sic] and it has no definition beyond the name. It sounds like something that pertains to enlightenment or maybe even omnipotence. It sounds like something that’d unlock when no man’s sky turns into your sky.”

What Destructoid missed (other than the juxtaposition of the trophy’s name) is that it is a reference to Douglas Adam’s book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In this novel, there is a device called the Total Perspective Vortex. The device is located on the second planet in the Frogstar system and is used to kill and torture individuals by showing them the infinity of the universe.

Victims are forced to see the entire universe and their place within it with a “microscopic speck on a microscopic speck” of a signpost that says, “You are here.”

The device destroys the mind of those subjected to it.

According to the Hitchhiker Wiki, “It was stated that the TPV is the only known means of crushing a man’s soul.”

The “Total Perspective Vortex” is the platinum trophy for No Man’s Sky. Presumably, it is granted by gaining all of the other trophies, which is as close as any player is going to get to seeing the entire No Man’s Sky universe.

As the Inquisitr reported, the game has over 18 quintillion planets, and if one were to visit each planet for one second, “it would take [him or her] 585 billion years to see them all.”

No Man’s Sky — trophies and all — launches in only six more days on August 9, 2016.

[Image via Sony]

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