No Man's Sky

Ever wondered what the center of the galaxy smells like? Depending on your preference, the answer could be raspberries or rum.

As improbable as this sounds, the discovery was made when astronomers from the Max Plank Institute used the IRAM radio telescope in Spain to study Sagittarius B2, a dust cloud near the center of the galaxy. The announcement was made at the time in Astrophysics and has since been confirmed with studies of similar dust clouds.

Among the chemicals for which signals were found was ethyl formate (C3H6O2), the dominant flavor in raspberries, as well as an important one in rum.

“What we wanted was to make a science-fiction game,” said Murray. “Sci-fi, to me, it’s about going on adventures in a universe that is unknown. It’s landing on a planet and realizing that no one has ever been here before. That was entirely the idea. That emotion you would get from exploring, and there’s kinda no other way to create that, so the technology came second.”

Hello Games didn’t come up with some kind of tech demo to enable players to fly into space and then build a game on top of that. In fact, as impressive as the technology is, that’s not really what Murray and his team care about.

“We don’t really get excited about the tech, and I didn’t even really want to show it,” he said. “I don’t want people to be excited about this tech — I want them to be excited about the emotion they will get from this Han Solo simulator experience where they get to live out their fantasy.”

So, what is the experience? Well, that depends.

“You choose what to do,” Murray told GamesBeat. “If you see some fighters attacking a freighter, that isn’t a mission or quest. The universe is just kinda working in its own way, and you can choose to interact with it however you want. If you attack people, then you’ll have to deal with the consequences of that.

“It’s not a game with a narrative.”

No Man’s Sky is actually a bit more like Minecraft or the open-world zombie-survival game Day Z than anything else. You’ll collect things, you’ll upgrade your ship, and you’ll explore — and, in the end, the stories you tell are your own.

Do you want to explore or get into combat all of the time? You can do that. Into hunting bounties? Murray said that is possible in No Man’s Sky. Are you more of a pacifist? Maybe you could act as a zoologist who travels from planet to planet naming the creatures.

“Whatever you want that makes sense within this universe you can go and do,” said Murray. “It’s a sandbox.

At the same time, No Man’s Sky will have “objectives” for players, but it doesn’t have quest lines that guide you neatly through a story with three acts.

Just as in life, everything is up to you.

“No Man’s Sky is about going on adventures,” said Murray. “And hopefully, when you describe your adventures to your friends, they will sound like stories from a sci-fi novel. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”

Even though there will be other human players exploring the same universe, you won't bump into them very often. "You can meet and get an idea of other players, but the universe is very vast, basically, so the chances of you actually coming across someone are pretty slim," says Murray. "We're not trying to make an MMO, or if we are, we're making a really terrible MMO, because everyone is spread so far apart." It's not a game that you pick up to play with your friends, he says. The closest approximation he can come up with is Journey, where players could cross paths with other players, but don't deliberately play "with" them.

So, without explicit goals or narrative, and without connecting with friends, what do you actually do in this universe? One possible avenue, says Murray, is to become a botanist or a zoologist of sorts, cataloging and naming flora and fauna. Upon discovering a new planet, animal or plant, it's uploaded to the servers. The next person to come across said planet, animal or plant will see that you discovered it. If you encounter a dinosaur and decide to name it "Awesomesaurus," every subsequent explorer will know that you discovered and named it first. Incidentally, each animal and plant gets a "Latin name," which is displayed much more prominently than the player-designated name, "because we know that you're going to call it 'Penis Monster' or whatever," says Murray. "We just don't want the whole universe to become filled with penis monsters."

As you make these discoveries, you'll earn money, which you can use to purchase things like new ships, which are capable of traveling further into the depths of the galaxy. There, you can find new planets and discover more species, or engage in more dogfights, which will get you more money to buy better spaceships, and so on. And that brings me to my initial question: What motivates all of this exploration, interstellar travel and discovery? Is it just the Star Trek allure of boldly going? If that is the answer, and if the unknown universe of No Man's Sky really is as vast as Hello Games is promising, is the sandbox prospect of more, more, more enough to keep players hooked?

Honestly, I don't know. For what it's worth, I probably would have said the same thing about Minecraft.