Hello Games are in a deeply unenviable position. In the wake of No Man’s Sky‘s [official site] release with its waterfall of unkept promises, to me it seems the studio is trapped in the Sisyphean task of trying to tweak, patch, update and amend their game until it can meet the impossible imagined version created by the combined efforts of its developers and its players. Rather than compare this hugely embellished version of the game that greets players now with that of just over a year ago, the temptation is to compare it to the dream version we will never get.
But it’s crucial to push that aside, and accept that no, No Man’s Sky was never going to be this game of true universal exploration, of truly unique realistic planets with truly unique creatures existing in an intricate ecosystem, where we might stumble upon another player and interact, where we might see flocking dinosaurs hunted by predatory beasts as trees fall down in their wake… Instead, let’s look at what we do have now, because it’s actually rather a lot. (more…)