You Can’t Forge Allegiances With Alien Races
One of the big draws of No Man’s Sky for me was the ability to become allies with certain alien races. Speaking to IGN, Sean Murray talked about the different attributes that each of the different alien races had. Some were scientific (like the Korvax), while others were more aggressive (like the Vy’keen). So naturally, if you wanted to play as a more aggressive space explorer in the game, you could potentially attack pirates and freighters to gain more standing with with the Vy’keen, and this might lead to various rewards associated with that race. However, while you can gain standing with alien races in the final product that we have now, being allied to alien races lacks the depth and complexity and Hello Games had alluded to when talking about the game.
Right now, it’s incredibly easy to gain standing with each of the races. Simply picking the right dialogue options will gain you points, and defeating space pirates in any star system will gain points with whichever race happens to be dominant in that particular system too. It doesn’t matter if you choose to ‘prioritize’ one race over the other, because they all give you the same rewards for completing the same activities anyway: defeat pirates, choose the right dialogue options, find research specimens.
The alien races in No Man’s Sky are also incredibly detached from each other, and there’s no fear of any repercussions from another race by choosing to ally with another one.