No Man's Sky has been the topic of much debate and discussion over the past few months, and now SIE Worldwide Studios president Shawn Layden has given his two cents on Hello Games' ambition and execution of the space-faring survival game.
Speaking on Live with YouTube Gaming, the Sony executive said that he believes Sean Murray and his team "had an incredible vision of what they were going to create." He said it was something that had never been done before, which was a "very huge ambition" for a "very small team." While it may not have launched to exactly what some people were expecting, Layden says Hello Games is "still working at" getting it "closer to what their vision was."
"What we learned from [No Man's Sky] is that we don't want to stifle ambition, we don't want to stifle creativity," Layden said. "We don't want to put people into slots where they must execute against an action-adventure path or a fighting path or a shooting path.
"And perhaps over time, it'll reveal itself to be all that it can be."
Layden recalls visiting Hello Games in Guildford, England, after E3 2014, as he wanted to see what a team of six people (at the time) creating such a massive game looked like. He continued by talking about how the games industry is a place "where everybody has the courage to say yes" and "realize their ambitions."
"No one slinks away from a huge challenge," he explained. "And sometimes you just don't get all the way their the first go."
In related news, the Hello Games Twitter account came to life recently after months of inactivity. It tweeted about No Man's Sky being a "mistake," but it turned out that was the result of a hack.