No Man's Sky In Close Critique [Deep Spoilers]
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Channel: Noah Caldwell-Gervais
Views: 129,465
Rating: 4.7544203 out of 5
Keywords: No Man's Sky, Hello Games, Critique, Analysis, Review
Id: DA21NUasw5A
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 36min 40sec (2200 seconds)
Published: Mon Sep 12 2016
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what seems kind of strange is there is a point made in the video that NMS is the first game to create a vast universe that the creators wont be able to fully explore
but isnt that exactly what elite:dangerous did? I mean it may be some massive number smaller then NMS but once you get past lets say the 10 million system mark compared to 18 quintillion it kinda becomes a moot point
He completely sidelined the criticism of the developer's statements in presentations and interviews. I watched and respected his opinion, but the way he abruptly ended the video by saying "oh yeah the Internet is a little hard" without addressing why the internet is calling Hello Games liars is telling me he was dismissive of their post-release PR fallout.
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I think one thing he missed with his loius and clark comparison is that they were literally seeing things their society had never seen before, not just recolors of things they had seen a hundred times. He talks as if exploring the worlds on nms is just as diverse and interesting as earth, which is laughable. I think Yahtzee put it best, "you can explore a piece of paper all you want but you'll probably get bored pretty quick."
Kind of a pompous analysis. Lots of games are meta, and the idea of exploring random planets in a random galaxy is not impressive in and of itself, if you know what's going on under the hood. The famous comparison being, each planet of no man's sky is like a different bowl of the same cereal.
Very interesting, but I don't agree that HG's r/im14andthisisdeep writing should just hand wave the shallow generation and pointlessness.
Spoilers? Is there anything to spoil?
I have similar feelings about the game as Noah. I didn't want an ultimate sandbox simulation where you could do anything. I wanted a game that expressed that feeling of wanting to know what is out there. I wanted a video game version of Interstellar or 2001 A Space Oddysey. Because we don't know what the fuck is out there in space, in other galaxies, universes, or even other fucking dimensions. That's what I wanted from the game. I wanted to get to the center of the universe and have my brain blown by getting to see something awesome that I could not have imagined. I wanted to see a realistic black hole rendered in game similar to that of Interstellar instead of the black circle with spinning lights that is in the game now. I wanted sky mountains and canyons that are miles deep, half destroyed planets, dying suns, asteroids, and anything that could make me look at my screen in wonder.
But we didn't get that. The entire game was gimped around progressing the player towards the center of the galaxy, and what baffles me is that at no point during development did Hello Games realize that simply transporting the player to a new galaxy might be underwhelming.
Imagine that if you got to the center you were transferred to the fourth dimension and were able to manipulate time. Or maybe see the real world that the simulated universe is made out of (even if it is our own). There are so many possibilities in terms of scientifically known things that could be shown in the game. Hell, even looking at the Wikipedia article for the Milky Way Galactic Center makes me more amazed than anything in No Man's Sky. Basically, there is probably a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy but despite this our galaxy continues to expand instead of being drawn towards the black hole.
The only part about this video which I disagree with is when Noah addresses how many people are calling Hello Games liars. He says he doesn't understand the claims. Well, Hello Games did shows many things that did not end up making the final cut, like desert planets, portals, factions, and more planet variety. Does this make Hello Games a bunch of liars? No, at the time these things were shown off, Hello Games probably thought that those features would make it into the game. They bit off more than they could chew and it shows. Because of this I believe they deserve all the criticism they are getting.
I'm pretty sure a procedural generated game of enough scale generated by algorithms and not a true artificial intelligence (which doesn't exist) will never be fun and engaging. What makes a game fun comes from human level intelligence and creativity. Something that can't be and never will be replicated by current technology. When we become able to replicate that we'd be at a much much higher level of consciousness, that is, Gods.