And then once you get over there you might land on the same planet and then you will say, “I’m on a planet the size of Earth and I am on a mountain. “People keep saying to us, “Yeah, but what if I knew where were? Would I go there?” And it’s like, yeah, but they are going to have to stay there for quite a while while you get over there. Now before you get your spacesuit in a bunch and accuse me of being bitter about a feature that was never promised, here’s some references to the multiplayer component straight from the creator’s mouth: And while I appreciate soaring into the Gonad system as much as the next armchair astronaut, I can’t help but feel the massive hype for the game would have been lessened if Hello Games were forthright about the game’s multiplayer component. I have to say that I feel myself closely aligned with the latter, as I feel what we’ve been left with is nothing more than a lonely experience where the only interaction with fellow players comes from a shared encyclopedia of star systems cleverly named after genitalia.
Though some players have been willing to give the studio a free pass or chalk it up to server issues, others are fearing that they’ve been mislead in recent months regarding the game’s online features, and are understandably frustrated. Since then, players have obviously grown concerned that this feature was left on the cutting room floor, and Murray’s answers regarding the issue have been less than forthcoming. Unfortunately, within the first day of the game’s release two players who were conducting a Twitch live stream of the game did in fact attempt to meet on the same planet, only to discover they could not see or interact with one another.
Even though he assured players they likely wouldn’t see one another with any sort of frequency due to the nature of the game’s massive universe, he made it abundantly clear that players would share the game’s massive galaxy, and that the possibility of crossing paths with other travelers could indeed happen. While it was never meant to be the star of the show, Hello Games’ own Sean Murray promised on numerous occasions that the game would feature some form of multiplayer component. Or maybe it’s the lack of features that were promised throughout the game’s development period that make No Man’s Sky feel like an empty husk that once teemed with the promise of something much greater than its final form. Or maybe it’s the rinse-and-repeat nature of the game’s shocking shallow survival mechanics that makes each trek feel like an exercise in tedium.
Maybe it’s the generic architecture that makes even the most distant planets feel strangely similar to their furthest neighbors, killing any feeling of exploring uncharted alien worlds. However, after charting countless planets and weird examples of alien wildlife, I simply can’t find the desire to go any further. It pains me to feel so ambivalent about a game that once seemed to hold so much promise. There simply isn’t much there to hold the interest of even the most intrepid interplanetary explorers. Unfortunately, if most are anything like me, I can’t imagine the majority of them will be completing their mission to chart No Man’s Sky’s vast cosmos. Over the past week millions of players have set off on their journeys towards the center of the universe.
And when discussing games that bring with them a monsoon of marketing hype and intrigue, few games in the history of this industry have managed to cause as much of a ballyhoo as developer Hello Games’ hugely anticipated game of interstellar exploration, No Man’s Sky.Īfter what felt like an eternity, the game is now upon us. And despite our best judgement, games that show flashes of unique promise or aim to take gaming in a direction we’ve yet to experience always manage to set our imaginations aflutter as we marvel at the possibilities these titles seem to provide. While we at Hey Poor Player, much like the rest of the gaming press, try to look at things with a more critical eye, sometimes we too can’t help but put down our shields of jaded cynicism and buy into the hype that some games garner. How one of gaming’s brightest stars ultimately became nothing more than a gas giant