Disclaimer: it has been years since I’ve played No Man’s Sky, so I haven’t been keeping up with the latest updates. But I kind of miss the original iteration of the game. Even if it was missing those quality-of-life improvements that would come about in later updates, it made me feel something, which didn’t happen so much for later iterations of the game.
The original version of the game really drove in this feeling of extreme loneliness. The concept of in theory being able to come across something that someone else has seen but it mathematically being practically impossible* evoked bigger feelings than if I had known I was alone (i.e., a purely single player experience).
(* I am aware that this isn’t quite how it was implemented - there were players who were able to arrive at the same coordinates and were disappointed they were unable to find each other - but while playing, that was the feeling I had.)
Because I felt I was alone, I was very deliberate about everything I did. I took in all of the scenery and appreciated it, believing that I was the first and only person who would ever see it. I tried to just appreciate existing.
Of course the game later got updates to facilitate multiplayer play, which is great if you’re interested in that sort of thing. But it did completely change how the game felt for me.