What is No Man’s Sky?
It has been asked often since No Man’s Sky was first announced “what do I actually do in no mans sky?” With more information given recently as we approach release four new videos have been released showing the four main pillars of game play.
Exploration
No Man’s Sky is a game of exploration first. It is inspired by classic science-fiction and its overwhelming sense of adventure and imagination, Hello Games is creating a game of unprecedented scale and ambition.
No Man’s Sky is a procedurally generated galaxy with over 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (18 quintillion) possible planets; this almost unfathomable scale gives players an unparalleled opportunity to explore worlds that no one has ever visited before. Exploration is entirely seamless, with no loading screens, whether you’re flying from space to a planet’s surface or even warping between solar systems. Every planet is “planet sized” every new creature, planet, sun, solar system, etc… can be cataloged and named as you discover them.
Survival
It’s a harsh universe and everything from extreme planetary climates to ruthless pirates are working to end your life. Players will have to work to find ways to survive. Finding shelter from extreme heat or extreme cold, customizing your suit to protect you better from the environments, improved weapons to help against predatory creatures, improved ship to fend off pirates, these are all possible avenues to improving your chances of survival.
Gathering
Everything in No Man’s Sky requires either materials or money, there is an elemental table that consists of some elements we are familiar with and many that only exist in the No Man’s Sky universe. Some materials can be gathered from “mining” with your “multi-tool” weapon, some can be harvested from plants, some can come from sentinels that you may have to kill, and some can be gathered in your ship from asteroids or attacking other ships. Different planets will have different materials depending on things like climate, distance from the sun etc… so this again ties back into exploration. Materials are also required for fuels for you ship, your suit protections, and your weapon.
Crafting
Much of the tech you need for upgrading and customizing your weapon, suit and ship will have to be crafted. There appears to be finite amount of space in each of these for both how many items you can carry and how many tech upgrades they can hold. There are things like thermal protection in suites, and better scanners, and better firepower in your weapon, better propulsion for your ship, just to scratch the surface. Every piece of tech you want to craft though requires a blueprint; these have to be obtained, finding them, or trading for them are to possible way to get them.
Trading
There are many factors that determine what materials can be found where, and what is abundant one
location may be very scarce or non-existent in another solar system. Gathering a resource like this in one location and hauling to a far off station could be very lucrative. It could also be very dangerous; a full cargo ship is a tempting target for pirates. This again ties back into gathering and exploring, it also goes into reputation.
Reputation
There are multiple races in the universe each with their own traits, while one race may be very scientific another may be very militant. The things you do and say will affect how these other races see you, if your actions are repeatedly contrary to a race they will begin to dislike you, this could lead to them not trading with you or even to them being downright hostile and attacking you on site. On the flip side, you can build a positive reputation that could improve your trade with that race. Each race also speaks its own language which starting off you do not know. You can learn their language by interacting with them and also by interacting with items in the world one example would be a rune inscribed obelisk. The more you know of a races language the better you will be able to understand and properly respond to them thus further increasing your reputation.
Combat
One of the great mysteries of the universe are the Sentinels. These are like the galactic police, robots of varying shapes, sizes, and power that exist throughout the universe. They seem to look after the environment as a whole. If they see you mining too much in one location or killing creatures or otherwise causing destruction, they will enforce their “laws”, they are judge, jury, and executioner. As you commit “crimes” you build a wanted level the higher it is the more the sentinels will come after you. You can either try to run and hide and wait for your wanted level to gradually drop away. Or you can fight the sentinels this can give you resources but also further increases your wanted level. Clearly stronger shields on your suit and stronger weapons help with this. There is also space combat, you can attack other ships and be a pirate the ships however will fight back and you may gain the attention of the “police”. You could also be attacked by pirates or hostile races. Again upgrading your ship shields and weapons and even getting the right kind of ship will help with this.