No Man’s Sky doesn’t give you missions, “you make your own story”

No Man’s Sky is definitely one of the most intriguing new IP’s we’ve seen lately. The folks over at Hello Games managed to steal the show back at E3 when they presented their upcoming title and gave us a glimpse of this highly ambitious project. Since then details about the game have been coming in at a steady pace, but we only learned recently just how big No Man’s Sky really is. It was revealed that the game’s universe is so vast that a player will need 585 billion years to explore every single planet in it. Admittedly,  it does feature a procedurally generated galaxy, which will expand over time so you wont have a list of all the possible locations from the get go. Still, this is pretty impressive coming from an indie studio, but why would anyone want to play a game of this scope anyway?

“There’s really two answers to that,” Hello Games Managing Director Sean Murray said on the PlayStation Blog. “The short answer is ‘you make your own story’. I think it’s nice to play something that frees you from missions and quests. But there’s a longer answer. There are core concepts that will drive the player on: you’ll start on the edge of space, on a totally unique planet and you’ll make your way towards the centre of the galaxy – there’s a reason to do that, but we’re not ready to talk about it yet. As you get further in to the galaxy, things will get more dangerous… but also more interesting and rewarding.”

Murray also revealed that No Man’s Sky doesn’t give you any missions in the traditional sense and there will not be much hand-holding either. Basically you’ll just have to figure things out for yourselves and decide what kind of role you will like to play as. The game offers you the possibility of becoming a pirate, trader, explorer and more depending on the play style you like. However, you will start off small and have to build up and upgrade your ship if you want to get far in the game. Everyone starts off with a very basic ship and you’ll have to find ways to make some money in order to buy a hyperdrive and visit distant locations. But once you have a decent enough ship and can travel the stars, don’t expect to find other players all over the place. Murray explains that No Man’s Sky is not meant to be an MMO and you will find traces of other players only once in a while.

“I don’t want people to think that it’s an MMO,” Murray says. “You’ll see traces of other players and what they’ve discovered, so you won’t feel alone, but if you and I were playing and I said ‘come and meet me on my planet’, I might be days or weeks away from you. Even if we were on the same planet and wanted to meet up… it’s like being at random points on Earth and trying to find each other.”