Till now, I have seen about 10 different planets, from various trailers and presentations.<p>Clearly the game doesn't have 18*10^18 unique planets, since this is impossible. The problem this game has is, does it have enough variance in its planet generation, so that the average player will not notice a pattern.<p>The planets I have seen all looked mostly the same, with slightly different color schemes and animals made from generic pre-built parts. Unless the devs are only showing a couple of percent of the game, getting the 10 random samples from the game, all of which show a very similar planet is almost impossible.
I really hope that the tech in this game becomes merely the framework for more and more detailed 4x style games.<p>I personally would love a game where you choose a role, from tradepost manager to shipping magnate and the universe is large and complete enough to make this kind of role rewarding and interesting.
While the technical achievements are impressive, I am not convinced how "playable" this game will be in the end.
Almost all the games in existence have at least 2 core elements: story and character purpose.
I have not seen evidence of either in this game (no, "space exploration" is not exactly a purpose).
A great addition to this graphical engine would be a scripting engine that would allow independent writers to create their own quests and method to submit them to the players.
I. Can. Not. Wait.<p>I hope that at some point they add something like that virtual computer that Notch had added to 0x10c?<p>No matter what this is the first game that I've been excited about since I was a kid.<p>EDIT: Damn. The negativity in here is weird. What is it with gamer's that they just want to shit all over things? No gas planets...yeah they are real pricks for that. ??? What? A procedural universe is kind of a big deal. There's nothing that says that this thing can't be extended in the future as well.<p>The planets look the same? If you look at the screens from the PSX demo there was some really beautiful landscapes there. There is a palette that was chosen to reflect early sci-fi novel covers. That's actually really cool.<p>Remember, you can always go play another muddy-poo-brown cover based first person shooter. There will be 10 published by the time you finish reading this comment.
I'm excited for No Man's Sky, but I'm equally excited for Star Citizen and Dean Hall's new space sim. I think that exploring/colonizing/living in space is the perfect setting for new games on massive servers run with massive video cards. But I am skeptical that procedural generation is (for this genre) any better than a huge team churning out really expensive environments day after day.<p>I always love the technology behind procedural games, but I still ultimately prefer an environment and story crafted by human beings. Perhaps No Man's Sky will have sufficiently advanced algorithms as to give me the same variety and intensity of experience that hand-crafted game environments do, but as I said I remain skeptical.
In another interview they asked the developer if there would be gas planets in the game. He said no, every planet will be solid because otherwise players would be confused as to why they can't land on some planets.<p>So there you go, the target audience for this revolutionary game is people who are confused by the existence of gas planets.
I wish this was being developed in a more open manner, with a beta program. I want a game with a community, and ecosystem rather than one persons singular vision.