@Nzall not completely unlike.
Here we DO know the actors and we get an idea of how the pieces fit together, but it is never spelled out for the player.
and because of this you never get to really "fight" some bigger bad or anything similar
The main "get to the center" mission starts out as you searching for another traveler called "Artemis".
You discover what happened to them.
But you don't "see" it, you can only place the puzzle pieces together.
Probably hidden in a time limited event .
"The Cursed" expedition is probably the closes you get to see what they saw.
That said, most NMS players don't even realize the nature of Nanites and why the Gek race changed.