8 Things You Need To Know Before Buying No Man's Sky

4. The Creatures & Wildlife Do Repeat In Some Ways

I had an "Ohhh, so that's how they've done it" moment when looking at No Man's Sky's art book. Basically, whilst all creatures are procedurally generated on the outside, have unique noises and colour palettes, their skeletal structure i.e. their animations, tend to repeat often.

We should've thought of this sooner, to be honest, as at some point a programmer has to guarantee a particular thing in their world behaves in a certain way. As such, many smaller creatures may range from being tiny spider-squids to squishy bears with fins on their arms - but they'll do the same 'hop' animation, because underneath all that procedurally-generated visual splendour, is a skeleton bound to a set of rules.

As such, there are 'dog types', 'hovering types', 'small hopping types', etc.

Same goes for the plantlife and many structural, underground elements. You'll come across the same basic stalactites and arching mushroom-like fauna, for example, but the colour schemes and scale will be different.

In essence, you can see the strings holding this elaborate production together. Personally I don't think it gets in the way as a planet's visual chemistry tends to work better as a whole, but you can't deny that some assets are reused, despite the assumption that "everything"was going to be completely random.