Today's
Guardian has a small article about
No Man's Sky in which both
Elite: Dangerous and
Star Citizen get disappointingly dismissed as "conventional in their emphasis on power, status and combat."
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/28/no-man-sky-creator-we-wanted-to-build-a-universe
At least
Elite gets name-dropped as an inspiration, but overall it's a worry. It's hard to say whether this is one journo's opinion, filtered through Sean Murray's excitement for his own project, or if it reflects the opinion of the mainstream media in general. I hope it's the former, because if
ED is being perceived at this late stage as nothing more than a space shooter then something has gone very wrong.
It's correct though, with ED in its current state. NMS is claiming to offer something very unconventional, along with the kind of procedural creations Frontier are currently only hinting at. Providing ED evolves into something approaching the same level of detail with planetary procedural generation, ideally before NMS materialises into more than vapour-ware potential, it'll likely be treated the same way.
Although the world itself in ED is anything but conventional, the game play and current content are nothing new to the genre. Extremely well executed with huge volumes of potential, but nothing new all the same; currently, it's elite vastly improved, but it's still limited to the same structure of combat, trading and piracy, with a world that's essentially no more detailed than Eve - more vast and accurate in scale, but it's still just planets you can only look at and space stations. ED is getting good press but NMS is blowing minds. But it's nowhere near completion yet. It's also looking like it's going to be a very lonely experience, for a multiplayer game - it's designed in a way that no player is likely ever to cross paths with another - which is, for me, a bit of a turn-off.
If ED delivers a similar level of detail and beauty to planetary generation, there will be no reason to play NMS. That said, we'll have to wait and see; I'm keenly interested in NMS and the press it's getting is fully warranted. But ED is here right now and just as exciting, particularly if it develops in ways Braben claims it will.
