My ninth grade Spanish teacher would love No Man’s Sky’s language system

Yeah, I speak Gek

It’s the first period of the first day of my freshman year of high school. Spanish class. Mr. Archuleta, a man who I had not yet met, walks through the door as the bell rings. “El reloj,” he says as he points to the clock. Thirty confused 15-year olds stare back at him. “El reloj,” he repeats, still pointing. By the third time, we got it. “El reloj,” we echoed.

“El sacapuntas.” “La bandera.” “El marcador.” It went on and on. Mr. Archuleta pointing and talking, the rest of us mirroring his voice as best we could. That’s how “clock” was the first word I learned in my formal Spanish education.

Playing No Man’s Sky this week, memories of that first day of Spanish class came flooding back. No Man’s Sky has alien races who have their own foreign languages. The player can slowly pick up on a language by being taught individual words. Say you’re taught the word “trade.” Any time you have a conversation with an alien of that race, their line of dialogue will be complete gibberish, but “trade” will be in English because you know that one. You won’t fully comprehend what they’re saying, but you’ll know it has something to do with a trade.

I found myself weirdly fascinated with this system of discovery. It’s partially because I think it’ll benefit me later in the game. But it’s also because I like seeing the blanks filled in as I eventually have a mutual understanding with the alien. I made it my mission early on to become as fluent as possible.

Things took a turn in my favor when I found a Gek (that’s an alien race) mining supervisor posted up at a settlement. It cost me 20 carbon every time I wanted to talk to him. I got into a five step loop where two of the times he would teach me a new word, he’d give me 63 carbon two other times, and once I got nothing useful in return. Essentially, I had unlimited resources to keep learning new words. It’s like I was paying a tutor to teach me and then the tutor gave the money right back plus a little extra.

For three hours, I clicked through these short conversations to make tiny steps toward my goal. What struck me as odd is how this Gek had no intention of regularly telling me useful words. He wasn’t teaching the building blocks of his language. Words like “and,” “or,” “you” — those are all important places to start. Instead, he was giving me stuff like “murderous” and “repetition.” He even taught me “memory-smell.”

I get why Mr. Archuleta introduced us to Spanish the way he did. It’s more exciting than jumping right into irregular verbs and conjugation. I’m still confused as to why No Man’s Sky language systems don’t start more reasonably and then work toward the nuanced. I’d guess that developer Hello Games wrote all the dialogue for each alien race and then put every single word into a pool where the player has equal chance to learn any of them. I still can’t help but feel like I’m learning about clocks when these aliens are never going to talk to me about clocks.

No Man’s Sky‘s language system also hits a strange snag when you consider perspective. As the player character, it’s presumed that you’re somewhat competent in English (or whatever localized language you’re playing in) and that you have no understanding of the alien’s tongue. That all checks out. But, think about the alien you’re talking to.

All of the aliens who are willing to teach you new words have a perfect understanding of both their language and English. Yet the game presents this language barrier as if eventual discovery is the only way to efficiently communicate with aliens. The Gek — who have been nothing but friendly to me — are capable of speaking English. Logic would dictate that they’d communicate with me in my language to avoid confusion since our trading is mutually beneficial. No Man’s Sky ignores that dissonance in favor of a more game-like approach.

Really, all of No Man’s Sky‘s language system doesn’t make a ton of sense, although it’s easy enough to grasp why it’s structured as such. It hasn’t even deterred me from learning as much Gek as I possibly can. Almost 300 words in and I still haven’t learned “clock,” though. Mr. Archuleta wouldn’t approve of that, but I can’t help but feel like he’d approve of the randomness of it all.