No Man's Sky 18 minute IGN gameplay video

I'm sorry but this was hilarious to read. Every other game has been a waste of time guys. Can't wait to show you barbarians the first real videogame: No Man's Sky. Where you craft, shoot stuff, and go to the center of the universe... oh wait... that's a goal..... uhhhhhh....

Nevermind. I'll just go back to games my drone like mind can handle.

well, i usually ignore quests or at least what quest givers say to me, and i'm not bashing anything except the idea that an official quest is somehow necessary to make something worth doing.

and it has nothing to do with gameplay.

let me put it this way - a game is: swinging your weapon, killing a mob, exploring an area, making a jump, equipping some armor, etc etc, whatever it may be, and all that works the same whether you have an in-game reason to do it, or whether you're doing it just for fun.

i'm only ever doing it for fun, if i get to the end of a quest and i've got some npc telling me something which isn't exactly in sync with my train of thought i will just be like "whatever man, you do what you gotta do i guess" and press on to the next gameplay section. it doesn't ruin the game for me, not at all, but if a game has a set-up which caters more to my train of thought then it's all for the better, games like Eve, like this, like minecraft, and I'm going to count Elder Scrolls because the mq is completely optional by design. In those cases the game develops with me and because of me, me specifically, not just 'the player'.

so now, do you understand where I'm coming from?

also this need for some revelatory motive or climax or story arc puts a lot of pressure on developers that they're not going to be able to meet most of the time, it can result in outcomes like the ME3 ending, reaching for some impossible surprise which doesn't really affect how much fun you had in the game, unless it's that important to you, which is fine, but that's only one road games can go down, and there are not enough truly open-ended models out there for my taste, everything's getting swamped with the fully-voiced hollywood spectacle, and it's too soon for that to happen. games are young and need to grow more, programming finer details will lead to richer worlds, with perhaps enough going on to make individual and organic stories more viable and more interesting for more people.

If this game turns out to be Proteus with a spaceship, that'll be cool with me.

It's funny, but whereas the thought of playing any game with any kind of co-operative, multiplayer element is normally enough to put me off a game for life (ala Destiny), I almost feel sad that this game is lacking such a function.

The Journey style, sectional and random shared space, seems almost tailor-made for this game. Communicating through gestures would also seem to be the most apt given that you would expect that within the universe's own parameters you would be more likely to come across aliens than other members of your own species.

I know the game is a shared space to an extent, and you may possibly come across other players, but on the whole, this universe seems incredibly lonely. Half the fun of exploration is creating shared experiences with other people.

As an aside, have Hello Games talked at all about coming across fully inhabited and developed planets. I know given the relative rarity of finding life anywhere that it is unlikely that you would come across such a planet, but surely if there truly are billions of planets like they said there are, then chances are you would come across one sooner or later?

I dont really understand this "fun" argument. The reason why people usually play any game is that they are having fun playing it. Some people enjoy playing Battlefield 4 or Peggle or Minecraft or Angry Birds. Having fun is a highly subjective experience.

As to no mans sky my biggest issue with it is the potential variety of the procedurally generated worlds. Will it be as exciting to explore those worlds after the 15th or 20th planet or will exploring those planets just become a part of the routine to get better upgrades on your way to the center of the galaxy.

Another question is also how the upgrades are paced in the game. Is there a danger of hitting the max level of upgrades too quickly? Will the player keep exploring the planets if he or she has maxed the upgrade trees?

@kmfrob: You CAN come across other players, Murray always compares it to Journey where sometimes you'll see another player, but you don't know who it is.

It will be extremely rare, though. Even if all players start in the same solar system, the chance you'll be in the same spot as another player is very slim, because of the scale of everything.

Everyone starts at the outer edge of the galaxy and most people will move inwards to the center, so I guess chances you'll see other players will increase when you get closer to the center.

@mrcraggle said:

wow, that's the most blatant copy i think I've ever seen. Also i hate the UI in destiny

My main concern is that procedural generation will just end up with millions of planets with slightly different variations in colour and shape of the same base creatures/plants/geometry. I don't care if there are millions of variations if they are all kind of the same thing.

@dussck:

Yeah, well the hope would be that, as you said, the closer you get to the center of the universe, the more player based activity you come across. Like, it would be great if you could set up permanently on planets and create trading communities etc., but given the lack of any base building functionality this seems like it would be a pretty miserable thing to do.

To me, it seems like this game is the wrong way round. Everybody should start off in the middle, and then fan out. Perhaps the goal could be to find a single specific artifact (mcguffin) lost somewhere within the universe using some very general/mystical instructions. I know that's not what this game is, but at the same time I feel that's the kind of thing that it is lacking.

I don't see why the planetary landings would be so hard to pull off, there were procedurally generated space sims doing that in the early 90's (I played Elite II doing it in 1993, but someone mentioned that another game did it much earlier too), on machines with less than 1MB RAM and with the entire game fitting on a 720kB floppy. Also without loading screens after the initial load. The way they did that was by only loading in the details that were visible (in 320x200), and all the planets they've shown so far in NMS have had pretty thick atmosphere's and/or cloud cover, and it's not like the planetary surfaces seem all that complex either.

@hh: The point is talking down to people who like objectives in a game is pretty ridiculous. And this game has objectives anyways.

There are also tons of sandbox games right now that aren't so much different from this game at all. That area of games is booming.

I personally just don't think the gameplay looks engaging. It's not a lack of objectives. I'd much rather play Elite or Star Citizen or something because those have interesting looking combat at least. Or something like Minecraft or a many other survival games that have a lot going on building wise. Or interesting player interaction.

If the procedurally generated worlds actually looked drastically different maybe that could get me but I haven't seen that yet.

But I really object to acting like story based games are some evolutionary step in games that will be outgrown. Yes, I think games can become more organic and nonlinear as we go on (Bethesda games for example are edging towards that with how they generate quests or adjust quest givers depending on player action) but those are just two different styles that are both valid. This game is never going to have interesting characters and complex plots that make me think about the real world. It's not going to make me feel an emotional reaction when one of those characters is killed off or betrays me. These things that work in fiction all still work in games. Saying they don't is the same narrow minded thinking that says something like Gone Home isn't a game, which I hope we can be past in 2015.

As I said before, if this game gets you all excited that's cool with me. That's just my opinion.

@kmfrob: While I agree that it would be cool, it would also be a whole different game then. People would band together and you should be able to create groups/teams and dogfight other teams and conquer and defend parts of space. It would become a Eve-Online in first person.

But they also mentioned they will keep on adding stuff to the game; like more multiplayer components and maybe a terrain vehicle (like the ME Mako), so maybe this game will be something else in a couple of years.

I'd hope they'd either let you start in an area near friends or can teleport to them once or something like that. I'll do the lonely exploration stuff on my own and enjoy it a lot, but I'd also like to be a pioneer with my friends. Can you build structures and change planets in permanent ways that other players can see? The fun of playing Minecraft on the GB server is that my little architectural projects are there existing in the world and others can see it. If I could find an attractive planet with a magenta sky and build my capital city and create a cave network and my own Menzoberranzen, I would be stoked. Can I buy a fleet of ships and park them in a hangar I built on my planet? Can assholes come by and burn my capital to the ground and carve massive holes in my planet from their Death Star? That seems terrible but it also seems incredible.

@brodehouse:

As far as I'm aware, there is no building functionality in the game. I think you're right though, a certain Minecraft-esque creation tool would be great. I would love to be able to build my own little hideaway on some distant obscure planet somewhere, just waiting for the one day that somebody happens to come across it.

I'm starting to feel like No Mans Sky might get me back into gaming! Exciting!

@artisanbreads: my post had a touch of the ridiculous, which i acknowledged within it, i think you took it too seriously, and it wasn't at all directed at people who like objectives, just people who can't function without them.

anyway, on to the next encounter.

Okay as long as we are aware. Like I said, just reminds me of people saying Gone Home isn't a game and that kind of thing. No insult meant.

If people like sandbox and more open games I get why. I like them too. It's just not an evolution. Merely another style.

@oursin_360 said:

@mrcraggle said:

wow, that's the most blatant copy i think I've ever seen. Also i hate the UI in destiny

I don't think you are correct with regards to being a blatant copy, or the destiny UI being actually bad.

Having multiple pages you page through with with L1 and R1 or RB and LB is standard for most games these days, it's just good interface design. Having squares for storage icons is nothing new either, it wasn't created by Destiny or Bungie and any shape could be said to have been used before so everything is just derivative of something else. The popup window is also nothing new when you mouse over something or select it, so I'm not sure how they are copying Destiny in that regard. The only way in which they could be said, possibly, to be borrowing from Destiny would be with the circle select mechanic, but I am pretty sure that's been done before outside of Bungie, and if you really want to get into it the mouse is basically the same thing, so they are copying from the mouse on PC.

The interface is uncluttered and simple, which is what you want for a game like this. It fits with the overall aesthetic of the game.

It's more than just a passing similarity to the Destiny UI, though. I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to say it was straight up copied, but I would say the No Man's Sky UI was definitely heavily inspired by Destiny. I mean, right down to the layout and background gradient, too.

@mb: Eh, I think both cases are more emblematic of a general trend towards that 'uncluttered' minimalist look. Graphic design that looks like an Ikea fever dream has been escalating ever since the iPhone.

Watching the old Demo Derby content reminds me of how overstylized lettering and obsessive use of clashing gradients defined late 90s aesthetics. Even more than how pastels, neon and animal print defined the 80s.

@brodehouse: They are both minimalist, but can't you see the similarities? It's not like there are a bunch of other games that have UIs this close to Destiny, either. The similarities are strikingly obvious to me.

I think the more I'm seeing and hearing about this game, the less excited I am. Maybe less excited isn't the right way to describe it, but more that the expectation is catching up to the reality of what is No Man's Sky. I love the aspect of space exploration and that combat is a choice that the players can ignore but from watching the video, the planets don't differentiate themselves too much to encourage players to explore. Sure the lifeforms may be different or there are other elements/minerals to mine but if every planet is like that, it'll get repetitive rather fast.

Reasons to explore include, finding resources, finding alien artifacts, finding new equipment, discovering new species, exploring interesting planetary features. All of those are ends in and of themselves, but they all contribute to the goal of getting to the center of the galaxy.

I really don't think that diversity of planets will be an issue, honestly. There are 18.5 quadrillion planets, we have seen, in all media, a total of maybe 10 or 15 planets, which is a ridiculously small percentage, absolutely meaningless in fact. The closer you get to the center of the galaxy the more alien and interesting the planets get, so there is that aspect as well.

There have been a couple of very interesting planets in the videos so far which seemed really cool. The one was at night at everything glowed, the other was a desert planet with a portal to a green jungle planet. Then you have the giant worm desert planet from the first or second trailer. To argue that there won't be enough interesting planets given the small sample size so far is not reasonable to me.

Sure there are going to be a ton of dead planets with nothing on them, but also a ton with life and interesting things to explore. That is the point of exploration, to drudge through the mundane to find the extraordinary.

@mb said:

Yeah, aesthetic is one thing but Destiny and No Man's Sky both feature an offset grid of items paired with a 3D model, non-modal tooltips that track a circular cursor, minimalist progress rings, a soft background gradient, similar font treatment and a slim header with four tabs. I hope No Man's Sky's take is an early work in progress, because right now it's way too close for comfort. Plus, it doesn't look nearly as polished.

That's the thing though, the 18.5 quadrillion planets will never be fully explored and I'm just wondering if most of us will just be seeing dead/uninteresting planets, or ones with slight differences. But yes I agree there's still not enough information out there to make any concrete statements but they're questions worth pondering. I hope there are enough unique things to do, see and interact with but right now they haven't convinced me yet.

Define dead and uninteresting. If you find an amazing ship on a dead planet, or some super rare resource, does that makes it uninteresting and not worth visiting because there is no life or interesting planetary features? The closer you get to the center of the galaxy the more interesting and alien the planets will become. So if you want interesting, move towards the goal.

There is supposed to be something you can do on each planet which will make a lasting impact on that planet that others can see if they visit. There are at least a dozen features on each planet so far which are rare resource or relics to visit. I don't think a waterless planet which looks like Mars or Venus is going to be boring ultimately.

If I can get 20 hours of enjoyment out of the game it will have paid for itself I would argue. I've paid 60 dollars for games that I played for less than 5 hours because they turned out to be terrible. The original Gears of War was so terribly boring to me that I stopped playing it after an hour. I think it comes down to whether or not this type of game is your thing. Gears was not my kind of game, but this definitely is, regardless of how many dead worlds there are around the edge of the galaxy.

I'm right there with you dude! I don't understand the levels of hype people already have for this game...I just hope they're not setting themselves up for a massive disappointment. I mean for effs sake, there are people already saying that they think No Many's Sky is going to be their favorite game of all time. And here I am, still wondering what the overall game is going to be, what the trading system and economy are going to be like or why one would want or need to use them, to what level one's ship can be upgraded or modified, how many different ships there are going to be (even a rough estimate), if there is going to be any kind of story, you know...little things like that.

I understand all the big abstract systems that Hello Games has been touting for No Man's Sky. Now what I'd like to see is how all of those discrete systems will actually come together and what the end product is going to play like.

We know what the trading system is going to be like, but we don't know if there is a universal economy with regards to resources and value, beyond rare resources vs common. You take elements you find, and combine them to create other elements which you can trade for more money or even use to upgrade your equipment.

The upgrade have to do with weapons, shields, cargo space and hyper drive at this point. The number of ship combinations is in the hundreds of thousands according to Sean, with regards to looks and various basic features of those ships, the same goes for weapons supposedly.

It's already been said, I think it was Brad who said it, that even after an hour with the game you are barely scratching the surface. It isn't a game that you can get a full measure of without playing for several hours. I would say that is a testament to the depth of the game at this stage of development, and would be a positive rather than negative aspect of the game.

@redundantbooth said:

If that's true, then they should start showing more of the game than they have, because they seem to be hitting the same beats in every demo. We've already seen them landing on and taking off from a planet, playing with weird wildlife and engaging in basic combat multiple times. I'd like to see them demonstrate how crafting and trading works, what actually happens when you upgrade your ship, how the AI ships and fleets interact with one another. We know how pretty the planets can be, but I want to see the ugly ones too. I'm optimistic about the game, but we're reaching the point where that stuff needs to be properly delineated.

Part of the reason why there has been a lack of information, from what I have seen, has to do with how Hello Games views the game itself. It's about discover, and that includes what you can do in the game, beyond giving a bit of detail up until now about the three main streams of gameplay, trading, exploration and fighting. There are various combinations and sub-categories within each of those streams and those are the details which haven't come out full at this point. I'm pretty sure that's why Sean didn't go to on of those points of interest in the 18 minute demo, he wants to save that stuff for us to discover.

IGN says that they are going to have a piece on the economy sometime this month. I was disappointed in their day two article to be honest. It was really generalized and in some ways the information was just plain wrong, or a mis-characterization. Hopefully the rest of their articles this month provide worthwhile information.

More like five minutes of gameplay and fifteen minutes of reaction shots, amirite?

No, but seriously, the game will be as completely okay as it looks now. Maybe they add in some more gameplay stuff, maybe they don't, but it looks perfectly serviceable.

In my case, if all this game was was exploring planets and a galaxy and had nothing else to it, no crafting, no combat, it would be the perfect realization in game form of my "power fantasy."

If I could explore the universe and be able to do such in a time frame that wouldn't mean I would die on the way to a destination, I would leave this world and all of my loved ones behind without any regrets. This game, from everything I have seen of it and heard about it, seems like that idea plus more. I don't need this game to be anything more than than what it appears to be.

This looks a lot like what I want. Casually explore the galaxy and try and discover what I can. I'm hoping the upgrades and resource mining doesn't force me to constantly farm planets for stuff. At some point I want a ship good enough to just aimlessly go around the universe.

I'm trying to stay excited for this game because I love anything sandbox, but they're losing me. The shooting looks pretty freaking bad right now. I'm already growing weary of the oversaturated art style, and I feel like the draw/gimmick of "you can go anywhere!" is going to get old FAST if there's nothing to do except basically looking around, scanning some shit, and occasionally engaging in poor combat. That will be boring as fuck, just like the millions of bland-ass Steam Early Access survival/exploration games. No Man's Sky needs to find a way to be more than that.

I feel like these guys should just partner up with Bungie and make this a huge Destiny expansion. That could be fucking awesome and add in a major way to both games since Destiny is lacking in content and this looks to be lacking in mechanics. I'd be completely into that if it happened. As it stands, No Man's Sky appears headed down a path of being a really interesting idea that won't be particularly well-realized. I feel like there's going to be this major disconnect between the Hello Games devs and gamers along the following lines.

Devs: "Play in our amazing, expansive universe!"
Gamers: "That's pretty cool, but what is there to actually do in it that's fun?"
Devs: "You make your own fun!"
Gamers: "Okay, but how? The shooting isn't great, mining loot/crafting isn't overly enticing, and naming something others may or may not ever even see isn't that appealing."
Devs: "Explore! Did we mention that it's all procedurally generated?"
Gamers: "Yeah, about 163 times. The thing is, this planet kinda looks like that other planet."
Devs: "They're totally different. Just wait until you get towards the center of the galaxy."
Gamers: "I don't know if I'm going to keep playing this that long. I'm kind of bored already."

Granted, I'm making way premature verdicts on the game for sure, but that's the sense I'm getting. Who knows when this is even coming out or what the final product will actually be, but the progress I had hoped they were making in terms of adding substance to the universe doesn't appear to be happening. We're still in "cool demonstration of concept" stage, IMO, and that's fairly disappointing. I guess I was hoping for mini-civilizations or something, not just some scattered dinosaur-ish creatures ambling around on a planet of "ground art asset B" and "ore asset A".

I also didn't get a good vibe from this video. As others mentioned, it smells of a paid advertising campaign. McCaffrey repeatedly talking about having his mind blown at seeing earth-to-space travel or vice versa (a feature which he was certainly already well-aware of the game having) seemed scripted as fuck. I guess there's a 1% chance he just said that on his own to try to convey legitimate personal excitement about it to the audience, but the cynic in me says that shit was canned. The video was filled with superlatives and softball-tossing setup questions as well.

I'm not entirely off the hype train yet, though. There's something here for sure, and there's still ample time for the final product to be pretty special if they get it right. I'm at the weird point now, though, where I don't want this game to come out anytime soon, though, because I'd like to see it become richer than it presently appears to be. Here's hoping they get it there, or at least manage to put out something good enough to inspire a sequel or imitations that capitalize on the huge potential here. I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure.

i'm still all hype. i also want to get that thing they described where they could generate dozens of unique ships at the push of a button (i'd probably play with that for hours on its own). i also feel like one of the few where it was pretty clear what this game was all about from day one (streamlined space sim with huge emphasis on exploration/discovery and some sandbox and dogfighting/combat elements). it sounds like anyone going on about confusion with this game just seems to be playing it up for the funny or something. like any other game they're gonna leave you in the dark about specifics until closer to the launch.

art design is phenomenal to me too. bright crazy colors and heavy contrast > drab greys anyday.

So the people in this thread asking questions or who are unsure about the game are just trolling, now? Including myself? Come on, dude.

Looks like a blatant copy to me, if i didn't know they were different i would think it was the same game by those screens. And i didn't like Destiny's UI design or the way it functioned personally

well fine, i'm not saying it's trolling but it does feel exaggerated and kind of following in the bombcrew's footsteps with their sentiments. there's sometimes a group mentality with these things here, though at times it seems weirdly selective. i know everything isn't clear but it's pretty obvious what this game's bringing to the table. sorry, that's what it feels like to me. the whole "what is this game?" question repeated over and over just feels silly to me. more pointed questions about the mechanics i can understand a little more.

Well, it is kind of lazy as most of the questions have been answered over at the r/nomansskythegame wiki. They have a comprehensive page that lists pretty much all the info along with source to date.

@redundantbooth: Well not everyone has followed the game as closely as you seem to have. You do seem to care about it quite a lot though, I mean you have been a member here since 2013 and your first forum post (and it looks like your only posts ) are in this thread about No Man's Sky. Asking others to go read some reddit threads and the game wiki with links to sources seems pretty unfair, too - not everyone has that kind of free time where they can spend that much energy doing research about a game that isn't even out yet.

@ripelivejam: Ugh...I can't stand that attitude. Why is it that people aren't allowed to have opinions similar to some Giant Bomb staffers without someone (sometimes more than one person) accusing them of just following the crew like blind sheep? That is something I've seen tossed around on this site for a long time and it really bugs the shit out of me. That is a pretty rude thing to insinuate, it's like a passive aggressive way of accusing others of not being able to think for themselves.

I am mostly looking forward to landing on the planets where the mathematics have gone a touch haywire. Every algorithm has its peaks and troughs. Those will be the most onteresting places in the game, imo.

@mb:

It literally takes less than half an hour reading the wiki to find out all of this information. I'm also not sure why it matters when I started posting, how long I've been a member of the gb site, or how much I am or am not looking forward to the game. That information neither adds to or takes away from my point. If you are ignorant of a game, and willfully so, then don't say anything.

@redundantbooth: Sorry dude that's not how the forums here work. You can't expect everyone to know everything about a game or ask them to just remain silent - part of what the forums are for is sharing and discovering information. I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone be as informed as you are about No Man's Sky. Try not to get too worked up about it, after all it's only a game, and one none of us have played. I don't think anyone here is "willfully ignorant" just because they haven't done the same amount of research that you have, that is completely unfair.

The very defensive stance people have with this unreleased game is interesting.

I don't see this game having as wide appeal as it's being pushed with and I don't think it's going to be mechanically deep enough for a lot of people to enjoy. Doesn't mean it's bad. But they basically waited to show that that stuff wasn't really there until late in the game so this whole reaction is very predictable to me. I don't know if they did themselves any favors. But the game is widely known so maybe they did. We will have to see. Obviously some people are very excited.

I don't see why that affects any of your enjoyment and if you haven't even played the game, maybe just relax and wait for it anyways. The rest of us aren't scouring reddit for info, sorry.

This would actually make me really interested if it could be so all over the place but so far it's been mostly different colors and elements in the same roles (different plants, wandering animals, etc) but nothing crazy.

Yeah, I get that. Firewatch on the other hand...

...is kind of a same type deal. That one's still a bit funny though.

@mb: I don't think you should remain silent if you have questions. I mean just blatant bashing, calling the game trash basically without any knowledge and without asking questions. It's not my kind of game because of x when x is wrong and could have been answered if they had worded their post as a question.

It's like people saying that so and so is defensive about the game. If you care about being properly informed about a game, sure, why wouldn't you want to correct that information? The game is going to be fun for people who like that type of gameplay, so if you are not interested in a game because of inaccurate information, you should get the story right before making a decision.

Ultimately we won't know anything fully about how fun it is until the game is out and we play it.

@redundantbooth: Except no one in this topic is calling the game trash or anything close to it, are they? There is a big difference between being skeptical about an unreleased game and calling it trash.

Do the planets have different gravity? Will there be planets with completely alien and unrecognizable topography rather than Earth-like grass, trees, lakes, etc?

I'd rather annoy you guys with these questions than sift through neo Nazis and photos of gorilla attack victims until I get to the proper thread on Reddit. Because that's what Reddit is in my understanding.

As for the shooting, this is still an early version of the game, no? I'll give them time to polish the gameplay before making judgments.