‘Oh, stop it now’, says the voice in my head whenever I see a negative article on No Man’s Sky these days accusing the game of being One Man’s Lie or some other thing. Yes yes, I have also criticized it for not putting the features that they promised they would, but let’s face it, even without those features No Man’s Sky is a pretty impressive game (OH wait someone will say ‘Tech Demo’) with all it’s faults.
But oh well, I have to justify why I took this year’s biggest joke (Supposedly) and put it together with one of the most consistent series and developers ever which is the topic at hand. First of all I would like to state that I haven’t played much of the game, since the game kept crashing on my system and am thinking of re-picking it up during the Steam sales, but the reason I think it is the next GTA is not because it is a good game or anything, rather the idea is great, and yes many people are right in calling it more of a tech demo rather than a game, but that is mainly due to the missing features and if Hello Games fix that up in the supposedly upcoming patches, hopefully without charging us extra, we could have one of the best sandbox games ever. (Yes you can laugh at me for being so optimistic here)
The idea of No Man’s Sky- Procedural Generation is similar to how GTA brought 3D open world back in it’s day and time on to the gaming scene. The only problem with No Man’s Sky is that it was brought in a time of internet and hype. If Hello Games hadn’t made the claims that they did and had optimized it better, the game would have been well received. But, even with all it’s faults, why am I calling it Rockstar? It’s because of the following reasons:
- Popularizing Procedural Generation- Not many people knew about procedural generation until they heard about No Man’s Sky. Yes many gamers knew that levels could be procedurally generated in games like Binding of Issac, but procedural generation to this extent, was something new for the gaming crowd. Also this has inspired a vast array of game developers to make games with procedural generation. We recently covered No Mario’s Sky and there are many games out there that have emerged on a similar feature, which shows the rise in popularity of the concept.
- Learning From Mistakes- Now that everything about No Man’s Sky is out on the internet, many developers will try to prevent repeating the same mistakes in their games and that will directly lead to better games being released. Over the years many games have been called GTA clones and not saying that either GTA or the compared games are clones, it’s just that every developer has tried to give it their own neat twist- Sleeping Dogs had the kung-fu like fighting, Saints Row made us practically superheroes and the character creation in that game is top notch.
- Drawing Comparisons, Discovering New Games- No Man’s Sky being a hefty 60$ (Which according to people was not justified) has not only led to people not getting the game immediately, but has also popularized some of the games that had been overlooked by gamers until now, because all of us know, there are people who go to Google and type- ‘similar games to XYZ’ (And that might be one of the most searched for GTA till date). Not only that, this has also led to comparisons between the games and as and when developers update, they will add a tweak here and there.
Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying No Man’s Sky is a very good game, but it certainly has a great idea and that is where I’m comparing it with GTA. Yes there are many games with good ideas, but I’m pretty sure that complete freedom trumps all of them (According to me). What do you think about this analysis? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Let us know in the comments below. Peace out.
I don’t think GTA is an apt comparison for this game by the aforementioned reasons. I do understand why there are Devs who still hold a glimmer of hope when they talk about this game. The idea was totally refreshing and new , but Hello games still mislead consumers. That’s why there was (and still is) a major backlash against this game. The problem I had with this game was not a result of an overhyped marketing campaign ; it’s just I never came across any of the promotional material in the game even after completing it. This is what really bugged me.
I totally agree that Hello Games misled people by quite some margin, but the way I have compared it to GTA is in the sense that now developers are going to try to make games like that. We can already see many games coming up now, with different features- Elite (OK thats a bit of an old game, but it came into light just because No Man’s Sky was so much hyped), Dual Universe, World’s Adrift etc have something related to procedurally generating large landmasses, and are trying to be different. Now if games had been GTA clones, then they wouldn’t have been successful- Saints Row and Sleeping Dogs. Similarly No Man’s Sky is going to bring in a wave of games based on procedural generation and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of these types of games by about 2018. (Which is actually what GTA had done- Popularized the open world genre)
What are you talking about, Sleeping Dogs was one of the best reviewed game of its release year and went on to inspire Triad Wars (a hugely popular MMO in East Asia). And Saints Row has been spawning games out ever since its launch. While they cannot compete with GTA in sales, they were not unsuccessful at all.
I’m not saying tat both those games were unsuccessful, but those games had the same ideas as GTA, an open world with various story missions. GTA brought about an era where every developer wanted to make an open world game and similar to that No Man’s Sky will bring an era where developers will want to make procedurally large worlds.
Would you rather have complete freedom to wander a desert or limited freedom to wander a theme park? Yes, you have freedom in No Man’s Sky to wander around, but you can’t really do anything.
Yeah that’s true and that’s where I have said that other developers can learn from NMS’s mistake and improve upon the gameplay part. There are already games in development that might prove to be better at gameplay. I’m not defending No Man’s Sky in any way possible, just saying that they took procedural generation to this large a scale and now other developers are going to venture into this field with more to offer, similar to what GTA did for the 3D open world games