On Monday, the world got another glimpse of one of the most-anticipated games of the last few years: No Man’s Sky. After only getting a few teases up to this point, gamers were hungry to see more of this open-universe game that seemed to promise so much when it was first unveiled at E3 2014. So what did this progress report tell us? We did get a few answers, but unfortunately, the demo gave us more questions as well.
First off, how about the game’s size? Well, the much-discussed massive scale of the game seems to not only have been verified by the demo yesterday, it appears to be even more huge than we ever dreamed. Lead developer Sean Murray stood on stage with the game, and attempted to demonstrate the breadth of the universe in No Man Sky by starting off in one small point, and then zooming out, and out … and out – seemingly forever. From the looks of it, No Man’s Sky really is equivalent in scope to a real universe – and that is mind-blowing.
This nearly-limitless size is truly exciting for gamers. Essentially, No Man’s Sky promises almost endless replayability. As Murray put it at the presser, there are solar systems and planets in the game that not only have not been discovered yet, they will NEVER be discovered. Just think about that for a moment.
But other aspects of the game still leave us with concerns, and the demo did not do anything to alleviate them. For example, there are the game’s visuals. It is not clear at this time how “market ready” the game is, but at this time, the jury is still out on whether the game looks good or not. Some might call the look of No Man’s Sky “stylish,” in that it doesn’t seem to aim for photo-realism, but rather opts for a stylized and artistic look. This could also be characterized as a choice made to save development time and costs. It is probably safe to say that nobody will rave about this game’s “jaw-dropping visuals” from what we have been shown.
The color scheme and textures of the game are another question mark. From what the demos, including this one, tell us is that No Man’s Sky’s worlds have a somewhat monochromatic quality to them. Each world seems to have a color palette that consists of 4 or 5 colors, in various shades. They also display a sort-of filtered quality, as if you were looking at them through sunglasses. For example, the world visited by Murray at E3 had a yellowish tinge. After hours of gameplay, will gamers grow weary of the seemingly-limited color scheme of No Man’s Sky?
Then there are the planetary environments. Famously, planets in No Man’s Sky are procedurally-generated, meaning you have no idea what you are going to find when you discover a new planet – the animals, plants and other environmental aspects will be a total surprise. In theory. But just how “random” will these environments really be? Monday’s demo seemed to cast a bit of doubt on the idea, if we are to believe what we saw. Sean Murray’s demo, for example, had him at one point dive into the newly-discovered “E3 Planet’s” water, where he found fish that looked exactly like fish on Earth. Now, let’s consider that for a moment. This is a living universe of an almost-limitless number of planets. The diversity of life-forms on these planets must be staggering, and when we dive into a lake, we SHOULD see some bizarre-looking creatures. The odds of us running into animals that look exactly like those here on Earth would be in the trillions – it should almost NEVER happen. So, the fact that, after choosing one tiny planet out of the vast number in his game’s universe, Murray found fish exactly like those here on Earth is a cause to wonder just how true the claims of infinite planets really are. What seems more likely, from the E3 demo, is that yes, there will be a gajillion planets to explore, but a lot of them will look very much alike – and apparently, might even look a lot like out own Earth. This has to be a concern to those who hoped to explore and discover strange, weird new worlds in No Man’s Sky. Other than different color schemes and other, more superficial, differences, the planets you arrive at may be more similar than you were hoping for.
Look, my intent here is not to bash No Man’s Sky – it is an awesome game that I will buy, and it will bring us all hours and hours of fun. Period. However, we just might want to manage our expectations a little bit from what we had originally hoped when the project was first announced. This is still just a videogame, and there are limitations to what the developers can accomplish within that limited medium – it was nice to dream of a real, full universe to discover and explore, but now reality is sinking in just a bit. No Man’s Sky will be a great videogame; hopefully when it is released it can satisfy our incredibly-high hopes.