No Man's Sky

[DaHeckIzDat1]

So, just yesterday I heard about an upcoming Playstation 4 game called No Man's Sky, and I was wondering if any of you guys had any thoughts on it.  For those who don't know, it's a space exploration game with a massive galaxy.  The planets are procedurally generated, and there are so many of them that the developed says that if one were to be discovered every second, it would take 854 billion years to discover them all.  That, alone, makes me respect what they're trying to do.  You can freely fly your spaceship anywhere in the universe, and land anywhere you want on the planets you find.  Each star you see in the sky is really there, and will have its own solar system of planets for you to explore.  The only limitations are how strong your ship and suit are, since that will prevent you from exploring certain environments like deep waters without upgrading them first.  There will be a multiplayer aspect similar to the Souls games, wherein the game might randomly choose to put you into another player's "world", but the developers say that the sheer size of the game means running into another real person will be extremely rare.  If they can actually pull this off, I think it's gonna be freaking awesome.  My main concern is that, with no real story and the only objective being "to explore the center of the universe," this will end up being like Minecraft- extremely fun for a few hours, but then you end up just going through the motions and getting bored.  Still, between this and Final Fantasy XV, I think I may finally have a reason to pick up a PS4.

PS, this video explains everything better than I can so... here!
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIX-5u6oEgo[/video]

[scotland171]

Thanks for bringing this up.  Interesting. It sounds likes its coming to MS, just a timed Sony exclusive.

Its like Rescue on Fractalus 30 years later.  Funny 'there is nothing new under the sun' sometimes even in technology.  Once this type of 'procedural' thing was done for storage reasons.  Whethers its dungeons in a roguelike or planets in Elite, its easier to create things on the fly with pseudo random numbers and some parameters.  Now its done because people's expectations are so high...its not enough to have 30 or 300 planets, we now need 18 quintillion possible worlds. 

The lack of an overall goal could be a handicap.  Even a trading game like Elite gets a bit dull, but the writeup does talk about hostiles.   Maybe randomly generated pirates, but if there were a big threat - like another player going all Kang the Conqueror on you, or some invading Borg menace... and you had to not just explore but build a coalition of the willing, build defenses, prioritize resources, deal with saboteurs or dissidents, etc.    In other words, they have built a gaming universe, but now need to have something for the protagonist (you) to do.   A natural disaster?  An outside threat?  Your evil twin?  Doing the Kessel Run in under 16 parsecs?  Building a new hyperspace bypass (you've got to build bypasses).  Finding the cure for the plague unleashed on your homeworld by a vengeful defeated foe? Something.

Also, with 18 quintillion worlds then the number of iterations of life is so vast nothing really matters.  Blow up a few quintillion, who cares.  Space Amoeba ate the Crab Nebula...plenty more where that came from.

Being an exploration game, the videos show going from world to world in a heartbeat.  Where's the exploration in that if its easier to find a new world then get a cold soda out of the fridge?  You should have to work for it somehow?  Find a new route, battle your way past tentacled 5th dimensional creatures...I mean, even Ecco the dolphin had to swim through hoops...here its just zoooom, new world.   Goodbye Neil Armstrong, hello Al Bundy. 

[DaHeckIzDat1]

For one thing, you get placed in the universe randomly, so there's a good chance that you might never even see a planet somebody else has been on.  And there's something about discoveries being attributed to the player that finds it.  I watched another video where it was zooming down on a planet, and it labeled it "[Planet's Name], discovered by [Player's Name]."  I'm guessing it would do the same for plant and animal life forms, and maybe minerals I guess.  So there's that incentive I guess, just to get your name in the game a lot.  And while there is fast travel, like I said you can also just point your ship in a random direction and fly until you hit something, provided you have enough fuel to get you there.  And then the worlds themselves are huge, and completely open.  You don't get just one single place where you can land and have an open world level, you literally walk away from your ship and eventually cross the entire planet and be back where you started.  Other things I've read have stated that there will be an antagonistic force in the game for you to fight against, but no details as to what it might be have been given yet.  There will be both ground and space battles.  They've also said that how you play is entirely up to you.  You can be the explorer/trader, you can be the pirate that blows up space stations for the loot, you can be the mercenary that gets hired to protect stations against other pirates.  But it still looks like the overall goal is to just explore and discover.  The developers have said that they're trying to give as few details as possible to avoid shaping our views of the game in any particular way.  They want us to go into the game however we want to, instead of thinking it's going to be a Destiny-esue shooter, or a Minecraft-esque survival sim, or a Journey-esque exploration experience.

[ActRaiser1]

That's awesome.  I wasn't aware that there would be some sort of protagonist.  I love the idea but am also well aware that I'll get bored after a bit without some story to drive me forward.

I wish Star Citizen would come out on the PS4/Xbox One.  I absolutely love the genre and relish playing on a big screen versus my laptop.  Although, these days they output to hdmi anyways so that's possible too. (i clearly digressed from the topic)

I remember this game being at E3 last year.  If it launches this year, I'm sure to pick it up as it certainly looks like a lot of fun for a quick romp in space.

[JWK1]

As many other gamers here, I've been following No Mans Sky for a while now. I'm very intrigued with the concept of a world that's *this* big. Like DaHeckIzDat, I respect the studio making it for their ambition. But, it's also not a very big studio. Are they too ambitious? Is it entirely possible that the game is just so vast that you can visit multiple planets where nothing happens. I tend to prefer more focused games, but that doesn't mean I'm counting this one out. I want it to come out and be the next big thing, but I'll remain skeptical of that becoming a reality until I see some reviews; to see if the execution is as brilliant as the concept. The bottom line for me is that No Mans Sky is a "wait and see" game.

[DaHeckIzDat]

Seeing as how a few more details have come out about No Man's Sky during E3, I thought now would be a good time to bring this thread back into circulation. I'm still ridiculously excited about NMS, but I think time might have dulled my expectations a little. For one thing, as had been said before, there will literally be 180 quintillion planets to explore, and each of those planets are actually planet sized and completely free-roam. The thing that worries me is, how much room is there to maneuver when you're already taking up so much data to build the world itself? I'm worried that the gameplay will be extremely shallow, and won't change from one planet to the next. I still admire Hello Games for their ambition here, but even I won't be able to stay interested if the only thing that changes from planet to planet are the colors. This is especially true since there won't be any sort of story at all. This might be fixed somewhat if they go back on their "this isn't an MMO" stance and make it easier for friends to connect in the game world. Honestly, I think the best case scenario is that I'll have an absolute blast for a few hours, maybe even a few days, but then I'll get burned out and have to put it away for a few months until I'm ready to appreciate the novelty again. Still gonna buy it no matter what, unless the reviews say the game is broken beyond redemption.

[ActRaiser]

Yeah, do doubt. The demo they presented during e3 was impressive based on the scope but the gameplay itself while you were on the planet seemed a bit simple. If they can freshen that up a bit we'll have an amazing game on our hands.

[Vexer6]

Looks very pretty, but these exploration-based games aren't really my cup of tea, so this is one exclusive game I won't lose any sleep over.

[Tina]

My thirteen year old is wondering when is it coming out??? He is so anxious for this game.

[DaHeckIzDat]

No release date announced yet, but IGN just today released this 20 minute long gameplay video of No Man's Sky, giving us the first glimpse of how the game will work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLcjvIQ ... e=youtu.be