14 DAY TRIAL // During last weekend's VGX, small indie developer Hello Games unveiled the first trailer of its massive undertaking, future first-person sci-fi action adventure MMO No Man's Sky.
The team previously developed the Joe Danger side-scroller series, featuring the wacky antics of a daredevil. Joe Danger did really well and was a stepping stone for the small studio, allowing them to tackle a much more ambitious project.
No Man's Sky looks like a mammoth science fiction adventure, taking place within a procedurally generated, massively multiplayer open world. The video game was announced at VGX 2013, alongside a gameplay trailer highlighting some of its main focuses.
The video showcases land, aquatic and space exploration and battles set in stunning, colorful environments, with apparently seamless transitions between the planetary surface, the oceans and outer space.
The 4-man team decided to concentrate less on designing every nook and cranny of every world, instead focusing on the core game mechanics. Consequently, every planet and every life form found inside the game will be procedurally generated, every planet unique and unexplored, with its own ecosystem and potentially unforgiving conditions left for players to discover.
Hello Games founder Sean Murray detailed the main inspiration for the massive undertaking during a VGX 2013 interview. "Sci-Fi for me is the books I grew up with, is like Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein. [...] We wanted to make a game about exploration and we wanted to make a game that was real," he explained.
No Man's Sky promises to be a sprawling first-person space adventure, where the stars players will see in the sky are actually explorable planets where other players are hard at work developing their own experience.
All players will act in the same universe and there will be persistent elements to their actions, having consequences that will also be experienced by others.
Space-based combat against other players and capital ships seems like a significant element of No Man's Sky, as Polygon pointed out. No Man's Sky took everyone by surprise, and although it seems like it came out of nowhere, Hello Games' upcoming MMO is definitely going places.
Hello Games' No Man's Sky is also the first indie game to get revealed at the annual awards show. A scheduled release date or information regarding platforms the game will be available on has not been yet announced.
