No Man's Sky- Planets

Planets SO BIG, it could take you a life time to explore just one on foot! And, that's with not stopping to look at it's wildlife, or ancient ruins. That's without having to fight your way through other-worldly aliens aimed at killing you! And, without thinking about the deadly creatures that want to eat you, or stomp you out of existence. The potentially poisonous air, acid filled lakes, and let's not forget about the sand worms! And, there are more planets than you can ever visit in a lifetime



These aren't maps in a sandbox game, these are planet sized planets! Each, and everyone of you, who plays NMS will be born on one! Yours will be different from mine! Your first memories will be different from mine. But, in that solar system you will be alone. Sean said, that we will all start out on our own planet, in our own solar system, but in the same galaxy together! The planets within the universe will have a 10% chance of having life on them, with 90% of them having no life at all. Of the 10% that does have life, 90% of that will be primitive, and normal. So, the lush garden worlds with more evolved life forms on them will be rare. There will be about 5 - 12 planets per system, most planets will be close together, but sometimes a planet can be far away as Sean says here! Planets will have a real day and night cycle too! Currently, planets have a single biome across the entire surface, but Sean has said there could be some variations. Lately, in the gameplay we have seen some similar looking planets, but that's only to preserve the game. The last time we seen major variations is when IGN covered the game in the tour of 5 planets! But, a lot of gamers call the planets with no life boring... uneventful, though if you watch the trailer you can clearly see that even the planets with no life there is AI to fight, landscapes beyond our wildest dreams, ruins, resources, the list can go on! Just because there isn't any grass doesn't mean that every planet won't have surprises!



The trailers that we have seen have shown some alien animals in them. But as Sean has stated, they don't want to ruin the game for us, and hold back a little when showing it! The procedural generation will allow for some pretty strange creatures to cross our paths. Starting out we will see things that look more familiar to us, such as the large dinos, and normal mammal type animals we have seen so for. But, in recent trailers we have been starting to see some bipedal creatures as well.

Hello Games has even said, that animals will even eat each other. But, as we get closer to the center of the galaxy, the creatures and planets will be more mutated, and some life may not make sense to us! Let's not forget that there will also be plants that can eat you!

You’ll have a mini-map, which will show points of interest, such as resource rich areas, and landmarks that you, or others have uploaded. And, we won’t know what it is until we get there. The points of interest include, crashed ships, beacons, Portals, trade stations, something to discover like mountain ranges, a strange creature, ruins, or a vast lake, which even on a barren planet there could be lakes, it just might not be water; could be acid, or ammonia, the list goes on. That's where our suits will play an important role, and those suits can be upgraded too. These upgrades include allowing you to breathe underwater for longer, or survive in toxic environments. So, make sure before you take a swim, you look at the chemical compounds of the water first. Your suit may not be able to handle it yet!



Some of the ruins can be huge, and Sean says, that they could have dungeons in them with procedural rooms! He also stated, that blue prints for tech can be found in them, along with some lore to the game! You can name things that you discover first, such as plants, planets, creatures etc. I wonder how responsible people will be with that kind of power! There will be trading posts on the planets. You will be able to upgrade your ship multi-tool, and your suit at these trading posts. You can see floating orbs at the center of the trade station. I imagine these are a sort of a kiosk, but not really sure! Trading posts are dotted around planets, and there is more than one type. Some might buy up resources, some might be specialized for specific upgrades to your suit, and weapons, and not every store stocks the same inventory. They also have ratings that determine the general quality of goods they can sell.

There will be portals to different random planets closer to the center of the galaxy in rare alien temples that you can discover. The one we seen had a central spire surrounded by a ring of portals to different places with two giant flying creatures circling above on both sides of the portal. Each portal requires a different weapon, or combination of weapons to open. You can't take your ship with you, so you need to gather what you can on other side and go back through the portal. And since we can only buy ships form space stations we won't be able to cheat, and stay there.



There will be combat situations on planets. And, as you can see here one of the big ships we seen in space is on a planet and being attacked! Also notice how it seems cold on the planet. It being far away from the sun would cause that, and on a planet too close to the sun would be hot! Just like in real life ones that are set just right will have life! Not all of the barren planets will be a bland brown color, some could be grey, white, or even frozen, some planets could be so hot they are molten lava!

Sean Murray was asked, if the procedural aspect of this created a problem for how traversal the planets were, after all they want us to explore, but what if we can't? That's where the jet pack comes in. There's no way Hello Games can be certain that we won't get stuck somewhere! I'm sure they could just put in a "respawn me out of here option," but that wouldn't be fun, plus add the fact that we can blow up the environment to get us out as well! The oceans in NMS will be deep, very deep. Although, we have not seen these deep oceans Sean said, that he tried to swim down to a point on interest only to find out his suit was not upgraded enough for going that deep and died! Caves on the planets can go deep as well, and as stated by Sean can go on forever, and you can even get lost. These cave networks can also be found by blowing away the ground beneath you, and can even be found underwater, as well.



The procedural music in NMS can also be generated by the feel, and look of the planet, which is something I can't wait to hear. The only music we have heard so far is the music in the galactic map. You will see AI on the planets mining, pirating, trading and even patrolling. With all that we know, and Hello Games being cautious about what they say and show. I'm so excited to see what they are holding back on. Their approach to keeping things hush is indeed refreshing after seeing some games too much before the release, and ruining the experience.

There won't be any gravity difference on planets because your suit nullifies gravity. It would be really cool to turn off the suit, and jump around the planet in low gravity! There will be resources on planets. Sometimes, you will have to blow away parts of the planet to get to it, which will get the attention of the sentinels, and increase your wanted level if you go crazy! But, there will be crystals around the planets that are free for the taking, and will not give you a wanted level. You can combine resources that you gather to make more valuable resources to use in trade, or to make a resource that you may need for your ship or multi-tool! While you are making discoveries, and such you will need to find a beacon to upload them to the Atlas. If you die on the ground, you will respawn at ship, but lose everything you are carrying, and those discoveries will also be gone if you haven't uploaded them.