Eurogamer asked Hello Games’ Sean Murray a number of questions that are on everyone’s mind when they think about No Man’s Sky.
The biggest one being, what do you actually do in the game? “There’s the answer I want to give, and then there’s the one I can’t really say,” he says.
“So, the one I want to give is to say it’s open ended, and players should be able to play a game lots of different ways,” he says before going into much better detail.
“But then there’s the answer I have to give, just because you have to talk about the game and write about it and convey it. So there is a core game mode there. There’s the player’s journey which, if they play it linearly and go from the outer edge of the galaxy to the center of the galaxy, that’s their start and end of the game kind of thing.
“And as they go, they’re upgrading their ship, they’re upgrading their weapons, they’re upgrading their suit. And they need to do that because they’re very vulnerable, they will be attacked by AI, potentially – very rarely – other players, things like that, if they cross paths with them. There’s space combat, there’s combat on the ground, there’s trading if you want to do that, mining resources and stuff, there’s exploring if you want to do that.
“There’s all those things in a core loop. Most of them give you money – which we call Units – and you can use that money to upgrade your ship. And you need to do that to be able to travel further. As you get closer to the center of the galaxy you will find it is more dangerous – just like in any game – and you will find that the best ships are only available towards the center of the galaxy. Or are much more common at least.
“And the best weapons, best suit upgrades, and resources that are worth far more. And freighters that you can attack are worth far more closer to the center because they’re trading those resources.”
