We have been following the development of the hotly anticipated game No Man's Sky closely, especially since it was confirmed as a PC release. The game has looked fantastic in all the images and video teasers we have seen and the idea behind the "science-fiction game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe," pushes a lot of buttons.
Developers Hello Games has now published the first gameplay trailer to coincide with the recent Game Awards event (in the full show video: presentation starts at 2 hours, 8 minutes and 45 seconds). After the video premiere was shown Shaun Murray from Hello Games took the stage to explain what was new in the video. He said that it demonstrated five of the ways in which gamers can explore the infinite procedural universe. New to us were the portals which can help you get around quickly – these will be important in such a vast space area that is said to encompass over 18 quintillion planets.
Murray also told us that he was extremely happy that a band he was listening to when writing the first lines of code for No Man's Sky now provides the soundtrack to the game - and they are releasing an album to accompany his video game. The band, from Sheffield, is called 65daysofstatic.
The content in the gameplay trailer doesn't provide a big leap beyond what we have already seen. We do indeed see various ways of exploring the No Man's Sky universe. There are some new types of landscapes and animals. However, other than travelling around and sight-seeing, I didn't see much of what would be traditionally be seen as gameplay.
From a couple of pop up text overlays, like the one shown above (after another spacecraft landed by the red one you can see up close), it does seem like some sort of trading is going on. Most other text info overlays in the video just inform you of planet names and their discoverers. Also you can see an ammo count at the upper right, hinting at some spaceship combat in the game.
No Man's Sky will be a timed exclusive for PlayStation 4, with the PC version to follow.
