Twenty years after the Colony War, the United Colonies and Freestar Collective enjoy an uneasy peace. The player assumes the role of a space miner working for the company Argos Extractors, who have been commissioned by the enigmatic Constellation–a famed group of galactic explorers–to locate an Artifact with strange gravitational effects buried underground. After extracting the Artifact, the player character experiences a vision propelling them through time and space. They awake to learn that their client is en route to collect the Artifact. Shortly after meeting the client and defending the mining operation from a Crimson Fleet attack, the player travels to New Atlantis, the capital of the United Colonies, to deliver the Artifact to Constellation's Lodge. From there, the player joins Constellation in their quest to locate more of the Artifacts, believing them to be one of the greatest mysteries left for humanity to uncover.
The player can switch between a first-person and third-person perspective at any time. The game features an open world in the form of an area within the Milky Way galaxy, containing both fictional and non-fictional planetary systems. The player is able to land on more than 1,000 planets and an unspecified number of moons and space stations. The majority of the landscapes within the game were procedurally generated, depending on the star of its system and its atmosphere, as well as locations of interest as the player approaches a planet, with modified and handcrafted content developed around them. As the player explores the game world, they encounter various non-playable characters (NPCs), some of whom have the option to join the player's crew. Such NPCs may aid the player in combat, carry items, speak to other NPCs on the player's behalf during confrontations, and comment on choices the player makes.
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