Game Informer has scooped a lot of coverage for No Man's Sky, and Sean Murray, lead developer at Hello Games, is finally peeling back some of the layers of this extremely ambitious procedural space sim. This dev tour may be a bit long, but considering fans have been so starved for concrete details since the game's 2013 announcement, it's like water in the desert.
I really want No Man's Sky to succeed, and not just because it represents everything I've wanted in video games since I started playing Star Raiders on the Atari as a little kid. It represents indie gaming getting back to the original core concept of indie gaming, which is big ideas instead of big budgets. So many indie titles today are really pretentious; boring walking tours of pretty scenery, or "press x to ponder the meaninglessness of existence" exercises in self-indulgent futility.
Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of indie games, but a lot of the stuff on Steam Greenlight is dubious at best. No Man's Sky represents a big idea--the biggest idea, to be honest--the wholesale exploration of an infinitely complex universe. Hello Games has been tight-lipped about the game so far, which has added a sense of mystery and romance to the title, but it also left me wondering if the whole thing was smoke and mirrors. Thankfully, we're starting to get a clearer picture of what they are planning.
