Once again, Empyrion is coming along nicely. Just when you begin to forget about their last update, they drop another. And with each update is with significantly better features that's steadily moving towards a fully fleshed out game. Latest does a graphics update.
Not groundbreaking that leans towards realism UHD/4K graphics. But significantly better than NMS and less realist than SE. Regardless, big kudos to Eleon Games dev team for being so dedicated on working on this project. It's hard to believe EGS was in early access on Steam since late summer 2015. When a lot of Kickstarters were spinning up and/or in production. And where many kickstarter titles failed, EGS prevailed to finally exit beta only five years later. With a sandbox supporting a MQ that now has:
- a fully completed flight model
- space/atmospheric/land and water vehicles
- space legs which actually DO something and so are an afterthought (as they should be in every space game just like irl)
- light RP/MQ elements which are continuously being expanded
- gather/salvage/crafting/base & home building
- space/air/land vehicle crafting
- light survival mechanics that require oxygen/food/water/temperature and radiation management
- decent hostile/friendly NPC AI
- NPC proc gen settlements
- proc gen POIs on proc gen planets varying from earth like to rocky planets
- NPC-player trade/exploration/combat game mechanics, and
- a completley stable proc gen universe
All of those features are still being streamlined/developed to support the MQ and sandbox side quests and activities. Which are still being expanded on like in this latest update.
And now they've added even more interactivity with destructible vegetation/game environment. And new humanoid/alien models for both PC and NPCs alike. When you look at the size of the dev team for EGS v. other space titles (both relased and early access). And then consider the production cost of EGS v. other titles to date. It's pretty clear the EGS dev team is one of the most underrated in the industry IMO. But that's because they only release significant scope expansion updates when necessary. And they've done so quietly without the hype, bells or whistles. My only compliant to date is the graphics weren't closer to ED or SE quality. But I"ll take whatever awesome features they compensate this eye candy defict for.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9BT1AJreV0