After 60 hours of play, here is a small isolated article to understand why No Man's Sky was a failure, both in terms of its launch and the game itself.
You can't even imagine how deeply writing this title pains me. However, as a fan of space games (I am a very regular player of Elite: Dangerous since almost its release) and craft, I received each trailer with a feverish excitement that only increased my impatience. Even if Hello Games ' communication seemed rather obscure to some, the promises were no less clear: exploration, craft, combat and survival in solo. Indeed, it had been specified early on that we should not expect a multiplayer experience but a solitary adventure of the Man vs Wild genre of space. Meeting alien races, learning their language, and trading with them eased the loneliness a bit and promised to vary the experience a bit. That was all the theory. In the end, the release was delayed by two months and was announced at the beginning of August. Yet, on the whole, the promises have been kept, and yet No Man's Sky retains an aftertaste of failure. Let's take stock together.
The technical aspect
First observations: bugs abound. Well, I will not mention the few cases of outposts positioned traviole or levitating crates because such a vast procedural generation does not exclude some misses and well, it must be admitted that this kind of bugs are quite rare. On the other hand, optimization level is something else. After being pushed back two months, the game is released in a state that is not exceptional. Whether on PS4 or PC, No Man's Sky suffers from slowdowns, brutal crashes and more. In addition, the trailers showed us something fluid, without transition or any loading. We saw the player enter the ship, take off, leave the planet and land on another, and all this in a row! Here it's the same, but with very violent slowdowns, and a rather horrible clipping when the ground is created in front of us. In presentation videos, if you look closely, this effect is present, but much more discreet. There… We just can't miss it so much it takes up the whole screen.
A PC version disavowed
So let's be clear directly: no, the PC version is not inferior to the console version, but it has suffered from several rather disabling factors. First, the delay in exit. Because yes… PS4 players were able to play 2 days before the PCs. Reason? Bah… Good question. Sean Murray had simply commented on the delay with a banal "we want the game to be the best possible" finally as usual what. We will say that since the delay of two months of Final Fantasy XV to incorporate a Day One patch to the Blu-Ray, we will say that we will forget all logic. At the limit, I will propose now that a developer announces a delay like this: "yes … it's delayed… So what? Laughing out loud. Kisses". At least there would be some form of honesty. But let's move on, we're not going to make a scandal for two days either. On the other hand, that some of the players were forced to follow the advice of Hello Games which could have been condensed into a file entitled "Launch No Man's Sky for dummies" is a little more problematic. Well here again we could say "it's okay, two days later there were many problems". In the same vein, that those who managed to launch it right away (like me) came across a version slowed down to the extreme and properly unplayable, that's something else. It was still necessary to note that the options were too lazy to evaluate your configuration, and were content to adjust everything to the minimum. As a result, we found ourselves limited in low graphics to 30 FPS. We just had to ask the game to display correctly. Again, it could be said that it was enough to configure the options and that the problem was solved. So certainly, we could … But it's still a lot of conditional for a game that we paid 60 balls!
An independent triple A?
You've probably already noticed that Battlefield 1 (without its DLC, haha) sells for pre-order much more than the excellent The Banner Saga 2. The reason is simple: BF 1 is what is commonly known as a "Triple A". That is to say, a game published by a studio of international importance (EA in this case), with a lot of money spent (often even more on marketing than in game development) to collect even more. An indie game, on the other hand, is a game developed and published by a small or medium-sized studio that is technically not accountable to a third-party publisher. It should also be noted that in general, an indie game that works, succeeds thanks to a critical success and esteem of the press (perhaps) but especially of the players! The reason is simple: independent studios rarely have several million to spend on advertising. For No Man's Sky, the case is quite special, since players were able to discover the game during Sony conferences at E3.Here again, this is easily explained: the console manufacturer finances the port for its machine and the com (stamped PS4 necessarily) but no more. They do not give money for development, nor do they intervene in its creative process. So here, we are dealing with a game that has the com of a triple A, but with the development of an indie game, since indeed, Hello Games is the studio that developed the game, but also published it. Well, the monstrous com is one thing, already there is confusion in the minds of the players, but given the price, we will not be surprised that the players have not been tender with the game. Indeed, No Man's Sky was launched at 60 euros on PS4, but even worse: at 60 euros on PC, because if you have ever noticed, in general, even triple A come out cheaper on PC. To charge a game at a high price, why not, but indie or not, at this price, he has no right to make mistakes. It must indeed be excellent to make players forget the multiple launch problems after so many factors, and especially a fairly high price. And that's the drama…
Space Hike simulator
From there, we came to the conclusion that if the game is not flawless, it will waffle faster than the Virtual Boy (the virtual reality launched by Nintendo in 1995). And indeed, No Man's Sky is not excellent. He keeps his promises, but so much at least union that it will not be enough. Exploration was promised, and there is. Space combat? Also! Craft? Likewise! So what's wrong? Every element of the game is developed in an extremely superficial way. At the beginning of the game, we repair our ship, so we look for ore that we always find in the same place. Then we walk, we scan everything we find to make money, at the turn of our explorations we find plans to improve our multi-tool (which harvests, pulls, scans, makes coffee …) but also our suit and our ship. When you have enough units (in-game currency) you can buy any ship crossed on the space station (or in the outposts) by simply asking the pilot something like "Hey the dungeon, how much do you sell your flying waffle iron ?" And there, the guy throws you a price, you pay and bim … new ship. Knowing that the only thing that changes is the free slots (those that are not used to build an element of the ship will serve as a place in the cargo hold). And so on for 10-15 hours until you realize that there is no point in crafting anything since you are never in danger. The slightest attacking critter can be killed in like 5 seconds, the biggest radiation storm can be harmless thanks to a suit module that goes well, and the ship is immortal in space since when the shield is exhausted, it can be quietly recharged using raw materials. of the sudden… I think I died once or twice at the start when I was still in "Man in underpants in space" mode (and still I didn't understand that the shield was recharging with resources) but otherwise… I never had any cold sweat. What is most lacking in No Man's Sky is much more than difficulty: stakes. Because fighting in space is useless, you just get assaulted from time to time, and that's it. No missions, bounty hunting, nothing! After a while, when you have all the plans available (and you're just looting useless duplicates in a loop), exploring the outposts is useless either. So, all we have to do is explore to … Ben Explore. We walk, we scan, we give epic names to solar systems (genus Mulin of the Centaur) or useless planets (like Pôle emploi). And in the end with the com, we can easily understand that some expected Star Wars and that they were disappointed in front of "Space Hike Simulator".
The Murray effect
Last point that is wrong: what we will call "the auto com". Because yes Sony's marketing campaign was cool, here the game is beautiful, full of trailers, nice music, all that. But when Sean Murray, the CEO of Hello Games starts talking, it's a little something else, because between the semi-messy excuses about the launch, the tricks of grandmothers to succeed in launching his game on PC, the patches that fix 15 million little things (proof that it could have largely been done before), When the guy expresses himself, it does not always come out of reliability. Yet at first, he went rather well: mouth rather friendly, recognizable, he spoke of his game with a certain passion and seemed convinced that he was doing an epic thing, in short: he had the eye of the tiger! But when you see the result, and in addition the guy continues to react as if his baby was a success… When we see the reactions of the players, which are almost reminiscent of those observed at the launch of Assassin's Creed Unity, the fact that the game records abusive refund requests and that the specialized articles that prove the disaster multiply, we wonder a little what it fuels. The highlight of this disastrous auto com was the declaration shortly before the release that the additions made to the game will be completely free. Basic creations and other novelties will be available in simple patches. No sooner had we had time to stammer a "Thank you Mr Murray" than we found ourselves saying "Thank you Murray effect" in an extremely jaded way. Indeed, barely a week after his other statements, our CEO of the loose declared that he had perhaps been naïve and that content would indeed pay. OK. Match ball.
No Man's Sky is a textbook case like I've rarely seen. There could not be such a large gap between the genius of the basic idea and its application. Because in fact, yes, what had been announced has been applied (and the use of procedural generation is a technical feat by the way), but just on the surface. It's a bit like having the great idea of going for a walk on a Sunday afternoon. You take the car, all happy, and you drive. Once you have covered 150 km, you realize that you have driven in a straight line and that apart from that you have done nothing else. Technically, you applied your brilliant idea, but in such a superficial way. If you had thought a little bit about which direction to go, if you had dug a little deeper, you would have had a very good Sunday, but alas, you only wasted your time. For No Man's Sky to be a successful game, it would have required factions, random missions, difficulty, long and logical progression, stuff that happens, life, all that…. Because indeed, even on Elite: Dangerous I see jaded players who have the best ship in the game and feel like they've been around it, but after more than 1,000 hours of play, not 15. Basically, what Hello Games would have needed is to think about what a game is, how we make the player want to continue playing, how we arouse his interest, how to make the game addictive, how to make the gameplay fun but also relevant with the objectives that the game gives to the player, And this even if it is the player who must impose his own objectives (which is often the case in a sandbox game). But no. The idea was good, so they applied it, and they went no further. We will stay positive anyway with No Man's Sky: the idea was good and it can give inspiration. Maybe other studios will want to use the procedural generation to make games with an infinite and exciting universe where there are plenty of things to do. Imagine a kind of mmo on this principle (Dual Universe for example)! We can also, why not, hope that Hello Games works on its game to make it as it should have been! But at the same time, the Murray effect….
