My overriding impression of No Man’s Sky’s since its reveal has been of its desire to create a wonderful space. I mean that in the sense of a space that inspires wonder – the kind of feeling I get when I unexpectedly happen upon a curious insect and am reminded of how much of the world is still unknown to me.
But there always seemed to be this really awkward relationship between No Man’s Sky pursuit of that sensation and what that meant in terms of mechanics, of objectives, of any kind of directed space. When I met Sean Murray at E3 last year we touched on the ideas of keeping people engaged with a world. The challenge didn’t seem so much creating wonder but combining it with engagement that extends beyond those initial encounters and keeps a player coming back. At the time, and at a subsequent hands-on, the engagement seemed to stem from the systems in place to keep you moving onward, never settling down, and continuing to explore towards the centre of the game’s galaxy.
I was disconcerted, then, by yesterday’s blog post titled What Do You Do In No Man’s Sky and another the day before in which Murray reveals and then reaffirms that base building is coming in a future update.