Set photon cannons to fire...

No Man's Sky pictured above

Okay so right now the internet is on fire relating to information of both good and bad sides to No Man's Sky. I'm actually in the progress of making an article confessing my sorry excuse for caving in and going against what I said about the game not being worth $60. I'm also having a really great time with it so far. Even before I was enjoying it, I never said much against the developers. I blamed practically all of the over-hype on fans, and in large part I still do. I actually took some pity against the developer, and kind of felt defensive towards them. I loved their "don't spoil/over-analyse the game" attitude, how they posted a list of what you could NOT do, told fans the game would be fairly chill, and have worked hard on this game despite a lot of trouble like their office getting flooded and wrecking everything. They seemed like hard working guys, with a good sense of humor over on twitter, and I admired their work ethic even if it wasn't perfect. I even hear at least one of them screwed themselves over in housing just to get this game made and keep it funded. I didn't think much of the multiplayer problems, and I'm certainly not angry towards them or sony for the hype it got, but after something that happened recently... I'm fully willing to say these guys have gone full Peter Molyneux, whether intended with malice or just pathologically bad wishful thinking (like Peter). I'm not going to be declaring these guys evil, but they sure are treading around bullshit now, and I'm going to join those who are calling it out. Whatever I say, know that this does not reflect on my views on the complete existing product so much. I'll talk about that in a separate article, but here my experience and thoughts will only come up where its relevant to dissect the myth from the truth.

Quick, google "No Man's Sky DLC" and tell me what comes up. Since this is recent news I expect things may change, but as of the time of writing you can see two sites reporting this recent word from Sean Murray followed directly by a link from the launch day statement with the heading "Free updates, won't have paid DLC". This one moment, this one little moment, is all it took for me to nod my head and follow the path that lead me to this long post of falsehoods that were discussed as a game element. Its no wonder this game is raising both fingers to Spore and Peter Molyneux (two comparisons I'm obviously standing by) by this point. Sean Murray, get your head together and stop this bullshit.

Oh, there's his head!

No really though, this is really the straw that broke here. This should be the point where game advertising becomes illegal, and someone gets a good hard look at from the law. Promising across your game's development that there's no paid DLC various times, promising free updates, even saying it at launch day, and then I'm not even sure if its a week later that it took him to say "oops, we probably will do it." conveniently after pre-orders and launch copies have flown off the shelves. This is also in addition to the salty wounds of the AAA cost treatment and pre-order stripped content. That's not "naive" as he admits, this is either awful con-artist dishonesty, or I-can't-speak-well-in-public type of pathological indecisiveness. It could very easily be either one at this point, but is likely a combination of both. Its not like he didn't expect to do more either, because at one point he hinted at adding in features like building mechanics. That's really damn ambitious, and they had to know it wouldn't be as easy as said and done, but they still promised it around free patch DLC all along the journey... until just today.

I'm pretty sure the way I've seen some interviews unfold, that this guy clearly wasn't ready to speak decisively or answer straight questions, and he never could seem to simply answer "Can I see people in multiplayer". He practically mumbles a "no" after being asked a 2nd time in one interview, but carries the question on somewhere else leading you to not see that answer. Now there's talk of it being a server problem, but uh... what kind of active online server is able to pause, and needs to specifically use search & upload functions to work? The answer is they've either got some weird wizardry, or the online is strictly database material. To be fair I'm totally fine with that, and love (actually kind of NEED) the ability to pause the game, but on this subject there is no way those two players were going to meet unless the server magically scans the two together if they're in the same solar system, and connects them online. I don't see that happening, but maybe that's just my inexperience. Either way, its obvious this game is not online most of the time, something they just cannot get themselves to publicly admit no matter how much its pressed. Sure they told people it wasn't multiplayer-focused, but that's deceiving of the fact that there really is no true multiplayer at all.

Not even sure a planet can look like this anymore

Then of course there's more common grade of shady crap being pulled. The reveal trailer was obviously staged to be perfect, with mighty dinosaurs, and wildlife slurping up water around a relaxing breezy lush planet, and its all really pleasant and nice before the space part hits fast and awesome. Everyone should know that's not the real adventure and how the game would play, but I've got to really question the generation density and call bullshit in the preview. That picture above, with a lush world and bushy trees, I haven't seen hardly anything like it yet. Bare in mind I have only been to around 9 or so planets, but everything outside of my starting one looks like a dried up rocky B grade sci-fi backdrop, and I'm starting to question if you even can get grass and trees together in a lush biome sort of environment. That's a surprisingly pretty big deal for atmosphere, and exploration, and its in so much of the marketing, yet I'm starting to think the ugly blue sickly hue of the cover work is more of what they decided to keep in the end. Oh but don't worry if you think they were only going to sell you on that game, because they put an early trailer from a time where they were admittedly different from the final product, as some of the first things you see in Steam's store page. Funny how I also see automatic "Uploading" in the HUD from a time where maybe the game might have actually been online? Now you have to PAUSE the game, and upload each new scanned thing manually. Lovely marketing No Man's Sky, way to treat your fans like garbage after years of hard work.

I'll leave you with one final quote, perfectly summing up how I feel. This is one of the comments from that reddit link. Then I'm ironically going to go back and play No Man's Sky, because despite all this, its exactly what I expected of it and I'm having a surprisingly good time with that. Still someone needs to get Sean Murray far away from public speaking for this game, and just let it be what it is. Now for that quoted comment...

Just... Holy shit, man. Holy. Shit.

I still love the game. Don't get me wrong. Soon as I'm out of work and my errands are done I'm going to play as much as I can again.

But after reading all of the above? After being convinced for so long that the hype was community created, not because of what Sean said?

Holy fuck, no. Oh god no. It IS. It's Spore.

Spaceman Spiff crashed, but he's still alive. Time to go back to the adventure...