No Man's Sky is doing a Minecraft and wants you to learn the hard way
Of all the E3 2015 showings, the sheer endless universe of No Man's Sky is one of the most tantalising. And it transpires that all of that world will be ours to discover and work out what to do with on our own, without any hand holding guidelines from Hello Games.
"Much of the game will be explained to people, I would imagine, from wikis and stuff like that," explains Sean Murray at a behind closed doors E3 presentation attended by GamesMaster. "Like [in] Minecraft, the crafting system I thought was a really bold move to just not tell anyone the formulas for it. We will be doing similar things with that crafting but actually technologies and stuff like that."
No two people will have the same game as they explore the universe. There are no missions, no essential points of the map that you're required to visit, just an almost overwhelmingly open world to explore as you see fit. "I grew up with Mario and kids this generation are growing up with Minecraft and they have a very different set of rules in their mind. We’re much more excited about this kind of thing," says Murray.
"There aren’t missions, you aren’t told what your name is, you aren’t given an enemy at the start, there isn’t a bad guy or a good guy," he continues. "Even the sentinels that were showing you they’re not actually particularly bad. They’re trying to police the planets. They’re trying to maintain order and it’s like what you are doing just to progress - mining resources or killing a creature that’s attacking you or whatever - it’s almost like they’re not wrong for attacking you."
A release date hasn't been confirmed yet for PS4 but the more that's revealed of No Man's Sky, the more incredibly exciting it gets.
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Louise Blain is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in gaming, technology, and entertainment. She is the presenter of BBC Radio 3’s monthly Sound of Gaming show and has a weekly consumer tech slot on BBC Radio Scotland. She can also be found on BBC Radio 4, BBC Five Live, Netflix UK's YouTube Channel, and on The Evolution of Horror podcast. As well as her work on GamesRadar, Louise writes for NME, T3, and TechRadar. When she’s not working, you can probably find her watching horror movies or playing an Assassin’s Creed game and getting distracted by Photo Mode.