What you actually do in No Man's Sky
"But what do you do?" For goodness sake, let's settle this once and for all.
No Man's Sky has generated huge amounts of hype, but everywhere you look there's always once small vocal contingent complaining that we haven't seen enough gameplay and that nobody's said what you do.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand: you start at a random location along the edge of the game's procedurally-generated but uniform universe, and then travel about. You can make discoveries, logging your visit to places nobody else has ever seen. You can collect resources and purchase upgrades. There are hazards to defend yourself against. Very, very rarely you might see another player - especially if you head for the centre.
The video below explains all this with moving pictures for those who just don't believe. It comes via the PlayStation Blog, which also gathered together a number of facts about the project you might not know. Some highlights:
- There are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets and it would take you 5 billion years to spend a single second on every one.
- Hello Games has sent bots out to explore the universe and report back on their findings, because even the developer doesn't know what's out there.
- You can name planets. All players' discoveries are recorded in the Atlas.
- You have a jetpack.
- All visible planet geometry is explorable.
- There are factions across space, and they remember your relationship to them.
- Animal calls are procedurally generated.
- The music is procedurally generated from a soundtrack by 65daysofstatic.
The full post is super worth reading if you're keen on No Man's Sky, which you probably are if you got this far.
