18 minutes of gameplay with commentary from man himself.

It does give a weird impression of sameness. It looks like you could go to a new world and fight hostile lifeforms for abit, but you'd only end up fighting the same robotic sentinels after a while.

Its amazing and all, it certainly opens up that part of space games I always wanted (going down to planets, getting out and exploring), but just feels like its missing something from what we have been shown so far.

Interview on RPS with Murray http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/07/no-mans-sky-interview/ think I may have missed it but is he actually saying anything.

Strange, the vid is not available any more ?!

[EDIT]

Solved. Alternate vid on youtube.

Ok, saw the video. NMS seems to combine more features than I ever hoped for. And we haven't seen it all. All classic space game elements are present and innovative ones added.

Crafting and combining useful items for trading or ugrading

Trade system (Sean mentioned it)

Space & planets come with NPC ships doing their business, you are not the lone Hero, just a piece in the world.

Exploration, collection of items in a procedural world, say you never explore the same thing twice and won't know what comes. Different at game start? Yes for the planets I suppose.

Fully destructable surface elements on planets, do havock as you please, can actually build some tunnels in rock...

World reacting to your actions: police, animals, stations, space ships - get them angry in some way and you will suffer for sure (Sean even mentioned destrucatable stations...)

Space combat with pirates possible, you are not the only target. So there is a AI system already in place

Wingmen and allegiances ? I don't know, would be very nice.

Offline with NPC AI or / and with Multiplayer? I still don't know, both probably.

Missions? At this point: who cares...For me it's well enough already 😎

Difficulty Levels? Don't know, but yes, PLEASE.

 Finally a space game that you start playing and having fun without taking it too seriously.

Thumbs up for this one, but...still waiting for release on PC...

XenonS

Thumbs up for this one, but...still waiting for release on PC...

It is going to be released on PC on the same date as its release on PS4 (they confirmed it).  Any impression to the contrary was the result of Sony marketing bullshit.
 
Every comment on a gaming website seems to be written by a person who either believes this will the best game ever made or a colossal screw-up.  I personally doubt it will be either one of those things, and it makes me feel kind of bad for the developer.  The review page on metacritic will look like Positive: 1,654,132; Mixed: 3; Negative 2,526,100.  It never ceases to amaze me how few people are capable of expressing a measured opinion on the internet.
 
Anyway, I personally would very much have liked to have seen much more from that video, but at least it was something.  I hope IGN gets all the flak they deserve to constantly cutting to a video of a bunch of guys sitting around a theater.  Fortunately, Marlin Brando at least has an appropriate response to watching somebody play a first person shooter on a controller: 

 
By the way, isn't "No Man's Sky" just about the greatest name ever used for a video game?  It's like the opposite of "Divinity: Original Sin" or "The Song of Ice and Fire" (not that both of those things aren't great despite their titles... in case you weren't aware: No "The Song of Ice and Fire" isn't a manga about a medieval dance club...)  Actually I think "No Man's Sky" is one of the greatest names for anything ever.  Is it an allusion to the "No Man's Land" of WWI?  Is it a Malcolm Reynolds-esque proclamation of freedom?  Is it an interplanetary no-fly-zone resulting from the antics of all sorts of vague and interesting aliens?  Behold, it can be all of those things, joy.

Excerpt from No Man's Sky interview:

"It will be so surreal to see another person walking around on a planet.

We keep talking about Jack's dad from Lost, basically just to see them in the distance. Like, “Did I? What?”

This should answer most questions about NMS, but as the game is still in the works it's all subject to change. The most complete infos I have found yet.

http://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/wiki/archive

XenonS

Still the big unanswered question for me at least is it always online or is their an off line mode?.

Still the big unanswered question for me at least is it always online or is their an off line mode?.

I have followed this question in one of the interviews. I will try to grab it again and give a link.

There will be for sure a offline gameplay mode (which is not exactly what you ask), but the answer to the question "how large will the game files be? For the moment, around 5-6 GB" let me think about a procedural generated universe that will eventually see its 'final' build once all manual artwork is in place, and then be released digitally for download. So technically, there shouldn't be a vast Cloud for universe and the player linked to it online only (like it will have to be in Star Citizen), but  a 'classic' download ready to play offline. But these are just my speculations based on some interviews and what I know about the NMO engine and what is therefore technically possible. Sean may opt for another road of course (which I don't hope).

Offline Single Player:

AFAIK, the numerous game features listed in the link above can all be done in Single Player mode. Especially because an AI system is in place. There is no reason to technically play NMS differently than you did with Elite in the 90s. Well, a good-sized hard disk will not harm, but NMS seems to be fully in the norm for that.

Multiplayer:

When reading the current features and interviews, there will be only limited multiplayer features (Stars blinking if someone has made discoveries is one feature I know about).

Sean doesn't like multiplayer much (for NMS) and I think that if it wasn't for money reasons, he would just thow it out completly (I wouldn't minimally care neither). Multiplayer is not the future of gaming, you always want a really dedicated personal experience in a game. And the world in NMS just delivers and transmits this magic thing.

Sean always insists that NMS is not and will not (ever) be an MMO. Basically his reasoning is: there is very little chance 2 players are going to meet because of the very design of the vast universe. Also what should they do? One could imagine some sort of wingmen operations that would help in larger battles or heavy havock battles on planets etc. But then: Sean definitly doesn't want NMS to turn into a "EVE or Battlefield" like game. NMS would then be an ordinary mass game like many, and we've seen it all before. That would kill all the game idea of NMS which is about real exploration and fascination mainly.

I think he is fully right in that. Besides, implementing a more extended multiplayer is surely not so hard as doing the reverse thing which needs good AI for ships etc.

I really like Sean not to be afraid working very hard to add good offline feautres in his game. Going the Multiplayer road is just the easy road so many devs have taken already: Make decent grafics in some engine, let the players butt head in a non-sense world. Bigger publishers already start to yawn if they hear such stories. Thank goodness, NMS is different.

XenonS

They have been very coy or vague about this aspect of the game although at a guess i'm inclined to think it will require an active connection, guess we will find out when they update the Steam page.

You would think some sort of connection would be needed for updates to the universe, because it has been stated several times that if you discover something or you create something new you get credit for it and others can see this achievement. So you must need a connection for that sort of update to happen? I hope the devs don't worry about multiplayer much and just bring us a great single player experience and I think a whole bunch of gamers will be pretty happy with it.

One thing that would be cool to implement is decay, so if you can build structures or you cause cause extensive damage to the the environment that over time it repairs or grows over the damage or removes or engulfs and man-made structure over time. Because when traveling in the open universe time should be taking into account if you return to a visited planet later on in game experience.

Ergo: Offline mode would have to be with the discovery upload feature disable. This on its own seems not a real hindrance to running and playing the game offline. But there might be other stuff that's online depending that would have a bigger game[r]-impact for offline mode. Or, I think, it all depends on how strong the global universe idea is implemented in the game. Some things can be delayed, others probably less so.

Looking back at the old and kinda unpolished space exploration game Noctis. There seems to be missing one thing to me to NMS that I think might not have been a bad idea for this game.

A stronger home-base feeling when it comes to the/your ship. (which currently is more or less just a gui element for when traveling long distances.)

This was one thing I really liked In Noctis. You could walk around your ship, and needed to walk and access different parts of the ship to do different things. (note: The Noctis ship was just a rectangular box with two control parts. Still ... it did the trick.)

This was one thing I really liked In Noctis. You could walk around your ship, and needed to walk and access different parts of the ship to do different things. (note: The Noctis ship was just a just a rectangular box with two control parts. Still ... it did the trick.)

That's another point IIRC all we have seen in the videos is a fighter cockpit, I know they said you can upgrade the ship but can you fly other ship and will bigger ships have interiors also will their be any interiors for the space stations.

Seem to recall seeing an interior for one of the trade stations on the planet surface in one of the videos.

Seem to recall seeing an interior for one of the trade stations on the planet surface in one of the videos.

You don't mean those space station launch tubes, but something else (which I have not found yet) ?

launching: youtu.be/PDQoVVtvdhc?t=158 ... (2:29)
Landing: youtu.be/PDQoVVtvdhc?t=235 ... (3:56)

Cobra TV source video.

 
*[fixed clock times]
*[Erm, switched back again because of in-video talk]

Yes, ship interiors which increase the homebase feeling that would be fine for sure, like in Noctis or Pulsar: Lost Colony. But this is all but easy to implement, especially because of engine design and the performance issues.

Let's just look at X:Rebirth, The Precursors or Parkan II to understand that the developers had to chose a very limited version of such interiors, especially if the surounding space has also to be rendered in real time like in Noctis. X:Rebirth has this problem (although it's a more dated engine) and maybe that's the reason why they haven't added a capital ship bridge. Although a mod is available but it largely reduces the performance of the game (fps).

If you don't give the player a 'panorama' view of space in the ship interior, then it's just superfluous to add this feature, unless you add really interesting means of interaction like in Pulsar: Lost Colony where you interact with monitors to guide your ship or order your crew.

In NMS I can imagine such interaction in a Laboratory of the ship where the player analyzes his discoveries. It would then have to be a Capital Ship which the player could fly, and so other cockpit designs must also be added in order to convince. A lot of work would be involved...

For example the player would be stepping in such a 'Laboratory'  to analyze the Screenshots he has taken to catalogue animal species or ruins of buildings found on the planets. So, yes, a ship interior would make sense in NMS, but really...I don't think Sean is going to spend so much time and ressources for this...

XenonS

You don't mean those space station launch tubes, but something else (which I have not found yet) ?

No I was wrong, it's in this video but it just show the player on the planet landing pad as well as the lunch tube one, so maybe that's as much as you get to see any interiors in the game.

 

Let's just look at X:Rebirth, The Precursors or Parkan II to understand that the developers had to chose a very limited version of such interiors, especially if the surounding space has also to be rendered in real time like in Noctis. X:Rebirth has this problem (although it's a more dated engine) and maybe that's the reason why they haven't added a capital ship bridge. Although a mod is available but it largely reduces the performance of the game (fps).

That's always been the problem with ship interiors that developers never make them useful but their have been a few which have tried like Sundog and Hyperspeed and as you mentioned Pulsar and hopefully Rodina at some point.

Something like a truckers cabin (as suggested here) would do I think. 🙂

*hoping that, maybe, one day they might add something like that.*

I'm with Pinback the planetside stuff NEEDS to be interesting.

Lets look at X Rebirth, universally hailed as a flop. Bugs are fixable, but its the core gameplay design I think that really helped skewer that game. For instance, you can land on stations. Talk with people, etc. Except that we have limited free time as adults. (Or.. well.. I do.) We would rather be doing FUN things. Fighting that pirate, making that trade run. The walking around on stations sounds really cool, and really immersive, but in practice its alot like playing Mass Effect and hating the elevators. Are they immersive? Absolutely. Are they any fun whatsoever? No. Let me back in my ship.

I think NMS is going to be like this. Unless there is a terribly compelling reason to go planetside, most players won't. Sure, exploration is extremely immersive, but without tangible rewards, its not something the average working adult will waste their time on. Watching animals frolic will get old after about the third planet. I need danger and excitement. I want it to feel like an expedition into the great unknown. I want rewards for my exploration, if I'm going to be Louis and Clark, then I want to get rewarded for doing so. Crashed ships with epic loot, lost alien technology, dangerous situations that require quick thinking to get out of.

My point is, that I REALLY hope the planetside stuff isn't just open fields of various biomes (desert, artic, savannah, forest etc.) with animals frolicking about.

Which is realistically what I'm expecting.

I still sometimes play Ad Astra, a freeware game still available, that also includes planetfalls where you can land your ship just like in Frontier Elite, and the planets include nicely done flora and fauna too. You were however limited to land with your ship only, the game engine doesn't allow to walk around, actually the planets don't have hard surfaces. Flying over the ground to watch these animals etc. was fun for some time and then I wanted to switch back to the missions.

At some point I have contacted the author and suggested him to include more varied missions, and also maybe some 'actions' to perform on these beautiful planets, saying that they shouldn't be there for decoration only (maybe some pirate bases to combat etc.).  He replied me that he had received many requests in that sense, but implementing this would be very difficult for him.

So, I think the main fascination of NMS will surely come from the beautiful planets, yes, but they should include IMO some suspense action for the player. Included features as for now are collecting information tokens on animals etc., but to keep the player there, some more 'difficult' missions on planet surface would certainly not harm and upgrade NMS a lot.

But then, how will Sean Murray keep up with the philosophy to avoid making NMS turning into a 'Battlefield' game? It's a hard balance to keep.

XenonS

I think the main fascination of NMS will surely come from the beautiful planets

Yea, they do look nice. But based on the general content so far of the NMS video's is also triggers my critical nature. If there the default, the danger that they might get mundane fast is not a unreal danger. ... Time will tell.

New Horizons calling Earth: "Darn, There are mountains on that wannabe planet Pluto !!!"   🙂

41 Amazing Things About No Man’s Sky (Aug 03, 2015)

Alex, from Hello Games, revealing some additional stuff about NMS at PlayStation.Blog.

Lifting some points out of it:

* "But there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets in the (game)universe.

* "This also means the game will be completely playable offline."

* "Planets are defined by their position in space" + "Most planets are barren"

🙂

 

The universe isn’t stored on your hard disk or on server somewhere

• The world around you is generated by your PS4 at the point you visit it. Leave and it’s all thrown away, but if you return it is generated again exactly as it was. This also means the game will be completely playable offline.

OH YES. 😎

Read some where it may be delayed until next year but as the have not given a release date it may just be rumor.

A masterpiece of procedural generation I think 😎

XenonS