Does anyone else think that Frontier are being overly ambitious with E: D. This is a dream game for me and a lot of the players. I'm sure the devs are in love with this project too. However, does anyone think that Frontier's ambition is far fetched, or that it might drive people away from the project? It seems a bit of a stupid question, I know. However, 400 billion stars, planetary landing, EVA and all this other stuff is a lot. I mean, I know this game is kind of "In the long run" but, can it be done? What's everyone think?
To be honest I have no idea how far the ambition of FD with this game really stretches.
400 billion stars, with planets, moons, asteroid belts etc. is no problem.
Planetary landings in general is no problem either.
EVA is no problem.
Walking around in ships and stations is no problem either, but will these stations be as boring as the ones in the latest X game?
And how detailed will the planets actually be, especially the inhabited ones with high population density?
Do they want it to be possible to actually walk around in huge metropolitan areas? Or fly freely over such cities?
I feel such an ambition would be madness, because it would break the illusion in a tremendous way. I do not believe they will be able to create a functional immersive experience of large cities and city life on a planetary scale. These cities would be perceived as boring and fake very quickly I believe. Especially in these days in which we are used to the impressive living and breathing city worlds of GTA IV & V, Watchdogs etc. In no way will FD be able to recreate comparable experiences just with PG.
I feel it would be better to have fundamental structural limitations in that respect. For example as far as large cities are concerned you are not allowed by the authorities to fly around in the city, but you land on a space port and you cannot leave that area. In that space port area there can be a condensed, lively society with all kinds of services and that is where you conduct your business.
More rural parts of planets should be much less of an immersion breaking problem I think.
I hope to see some impressive and above all convincing alien lifeforms, whether it be flora, fauna or something totally unrecognizable altogether.
Very important will also be the quality of the AI. If human and alien life all show the same behavioral patterns then this will break immersion very quickly. We are very sensitive to that.
One of the strong points of GTA IV and V is the quite versatile population AI that not only creates the illusion of going on about it's own business, but also reacts in cool and even funny ways to what the player does. Watchdogs is much worse in this respect and this makes the city world much more of an uninteresting dead backdrop, even though it is beautifully designed.
The problem is that depending on the depth of the simulation FD will have to create multiple games in one. That is why I was very hesitant from the start about the FP part for example.