Looking Forward to No Man’s Sky

Looking Forward to No Man’s Sky

It was a sheepish Sean Murray, founder of Hello Games, who was tasked with explaining to an excited E3 crowd back in 2014 what exactly No Man’s Sky is to be. A science fiction game based on the worlds of the battered book covers of Asimov and Clarke of his youth… A procedurally generated game in which every player will begin on a different planet and experience something entirely unique to their playthrough… The type of world he always wanted to escape to, but never could… These were the terms Murray used to describe No Man’s Sky, and I think it would be fair to say that he judged the pulse of the crowd, both at the conference and those watching at home, just right because from that moment on he was launched very much into the indie stratosphere.

The truth is I feel a bit sorry for Murray. Because while his company Hello Games were no doubt given an opportunity by Sony that they could not reasonably turn down, he seems almost reluctant to embrace the limelight that this opportunity has thrust upon him. After all, No Man’s Sky is clearly a passion piece for him, and while it would have been foolish for Hello Games to not take Sony up on their deal (whatever that deal may be), it has meant that the game is being viewed with a level of scrutiny that it would never have been had it remained just another GOG or Steam release.

But 2014 was a long time ago, and with the game’s release currently scheduled for 22^nd June in the EU (although a further delay would not be a huge surprise), it is still not entirely clear what No Man’s Sky actually is. Murray has given numerous interviews in which he has detailed the game’s crafting and trading systems and the broadly outlined goal of heading towards the centre of the galaxy, but the nagging doubt as to what happens on a moment to moment basis refuses to disappear from the comments of pretty much every forum post and comments section for this game. This criticism is a little unfair as A) the game is still in production and certain elements of it may still be in flux, and B) why does the game even need to follow such traditional structures as having task-orientated gameplay in the first place? This argument as to what constitutes a game in the modern era can be left for another blog post at another time, but, to paraphrase Giant Bomb’s Austin Walker, in the absence of clear information, people will let their imagination (and by imagination read “expectation”), fill in the blanks. This is probably a tough pill for Sean Murray to swallow as realistically why should he feel any pressure at all to explain his vision while he is still deep into its formation? But the truth is that by not divulging more detailed information, people’s expectations are rocketing. And when they rocket that high they almost always come hurtling back to Earth with an almighty crash and a bang. Or alternatively (and perhaps even more disastrously) people begin to lose interest. I have seen this happening already over the past 9 months or so since the last E3 showing, and it is something Sony will no doubt be aware of.

The reality is probably somewhere in the middle-ground between what we have been shown thus far and what the public’s expectation has imagined it to be. In a recent interview with Brad Shoemaker, Murray went into a little more detail as regards some of the in-game systems, including an alien language to decipher and the existence of NPCs to interact with, and with that added a few more broad strokes to the overall picture. But as he talks about in the interview, showing off the game has been a challenge for him. The truth is that the game moves at a slower pace than your usual E3 headliner, and that does not always translate well to a two minute trailer or a five minute gameplay demo. How indeed are you to make a trade of silica for a new hyper drive an exciting press conference teaser trailer?

This is not to say that the game will be boring. Nor is it to say that the game will be everything you want it to be, nor the biggest disappointment of the decade. The fact of the matter is that we simply do not know. Until the finished game is in the hands of the public (and to a certain extent the media) we will never know exactly what it is we are to get with No Man’s Sky. Sony have made a rod for their own back by putting the game at the forefront of their indie showcase push for the Playstation 4 and explaining so little about it, but ultimately I expect the game’s quality to shine through come its eventual release.

Again, I feel for Sean Murray. He seems the most reluctant of celebrities (and within this small, specialised sphere of ours he very much is a celebrity), and just looks like he wants to be left alone to work on his game. So, here’s hoping that No Man’s Sky proves to be the success everybody wants it to be, and that Sean and the rest of the small Hello Games team can take a well-earned long break to recharge their batteries.