After the videos and demos this week, No Man’s Sky continues to look amazing. Scratch that — beyond amazing. It’s gorgeous and beautiful, and possibly endless. It’s been said that it’s a watershed release in gaming.
But I’m left wondering: what exactly is the game about?
The theme central to No Man’s Sky is that anything can happen, on any randomly generated planet, at any time. The unexpected is both the means and the goal. The worlds can be massive, and we can jump from a first person view on foot in their vistas to flying through their skies to flying through the universe to the next planet. There seem to be bits of Minecraft strewn about (resources and gathering, lite combat with in-game aliens) and EVE Online (trading of resources, ship upgrades, and flying). And of course the game is pretty and the audio ethereal. It controls expertly, and provides incredibly seamless experiences, and not just in buzzword type but in the “this universe never ends” kind of way.
And up to now that’s been pretty much it.
This is, quite frankly, a NASA simulator for the year 2250. Adventure and exploration are supposed to be the driving factors for our push forward in the game, to find new and unique worlds — but what we do there is still foggy outside of grabbing more resources. Can exploration satisfy us enough on its own? It’s a huge promise.
This is potentially the point where this genre of game — huge sandbox exploration — starts to suffer from not having at least some thread of a narrative woven through it. And it very well might still have something tying things together as a gentle nudge, but it hasn’t been revealed yet. This is not an MMO, we’re told. We’ll run into other players, but it will mostly be for resource trading and visiting their worlds. Therefore, our interactions may rely entirely on the earnest with how much we explore other worlds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGy8HIYBwV0
This is No Man’s Sky second E3, and it still doesn’t have a firm release date. The trickle of information hasn’t quite been enough for fans who truly want to know more. It’s made us take notice, sure, but a lot of that is because of the premise and not what we’re actually seeing take place on screen.
No Man’s Sky has built up a massive expectation based on what the team at Hello Games has shown us thus far. It has similar games in competition with it like Minecraft, and even more now that it’s expanded its footing from just PS4 to also release on PC. It’s going to potentially face an uphill battle unless it has a formal coming out party of what it’s actually supposed to be.
There’s plenty of hype, and plenty to be excited about, but caution may be the one thing we need to help temper ourselves until then.
No Comments