There are, in some ways, a lot of similarities between Bungie’s Destiny, and Hello Games’ just released No Man’s Sky– both are massive games with a lot of expectations around them, and both disappointed – at least at launch in Destiny’s case, though the game has more than come into its own since then – and both with similar UIs and settings.
Speaking in an interview with Metro UK, Destiny‘s world design lead Steve Cotton spoke about No Man’s Sky a bit, noting that procedural generation would not, in his opinion, work as well for a game like this as properly as hand crafted worlds would.
“We talk about this a lot. For us it’s not good enough to just make a bunch of real estate. Real estate has to be really well thought out, so you really try to create experiences. Everything is very… intentional. And so when you’re hand-crafting and – no offense against No Man’s Sky – but when it’s not done by someone by hand it’s hard to get experiences that are memorable,” Cotton said.
In a sense, I can see what he is saying- No Man’s Sky crafts a massive world, but no world really stands out, because they are all randomly generated. Something more hand crafted would definitely have stuck out more for players- but then, I guess, the game couldn’t conceivably have been as big as it is right now, and the size definitely is one of the big appeals of the game.
No Man’s Sky is available now on PC and PS4; Destiny is available on PS4 and Xbox One, with last generation, and soon to be unsupported, versions also on Xbox 360 and PS3.
