Some fresh No Man’s Sky gameplay details have been released, giving us a better look at what we could expect come launch.

Sean Murray, MD of No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games, wrote in a post on the EU PlayStation Blog, highlighting gameplay areas like story, upgrades and player roles.

Basically, No Man’s Sky is a sci-fi, space exploration game that will see you traverse a vast universe in your spaceship. You might encounter another player occasionally, but it’s a big old universe out there.

Murray confirmed that there isn’t really any kind of story in No Man’s Sky, explaining that “you make your own story” rather than being forced into a more linear narrative.

“We’re not going to give you missions. No-one is going to come to you and say ‘I’ve lost five chickens, they’re scattered around this planet somewhere”, said Murray. “We want you to get out and learn about the galaxy to work it out for yourself. There are different roles you could play; you could be an explorer, a trader, a pirate looking for trade routes to plunder – or you could protect other ships from pirates. ”

Each No Man’s Sky explorer will be kitted out with a pretty basic ship to begin with. In order to get beyond the solar system you start in, you’ll need to upgrade that ship with things like hyperdrives.

You’ll need to earn some money to upgrade your ship, weapons or suit through trading. Suit upgrades will allow you to swim underwater or explore different and more challenging atmospheres.

“Something we haven’t shown yet is a mini-map at the bottom of the screen that will have waypoints marked on it for every planet you visit. They’ll show things of interest, which might be resources, or a ship that’s crashed, or some sort of beacon. It could be something to discover like a new species of creature, a mountain range or a vast lake. But you’ll have to go and find out what they are; we’re not going to tell you what’s out there. And that’s a great way to earn money to buy the upgrades for your ship or suit – and in turn that’ll help you explore even more.”

Planets in the mini-map will say unexplored, until you or another player discovers them and uploads the data for others to see. You’ll therefore see traces of other places, but actually bumping into them is pretty rare.

Murray was keen to stress that No Man’s Sky isn’t an MMO.

“We want to make something that’s vast – we want it to be like the Wild West, where you never know what’s over the horizon.”

No Man’s Sky is coming to PS4 and eventually PC too at some point in the future. Hopefully 2015.



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