9 Ways Hello Games Should Have Made No Man's Sky

4. Change The Planet & Wildlife Algorithms To Allow For More Memorable Content

There was a very poignant comment from Sean Murray in the lead up to release, where he stated players may encounter 10 planets that are fairly unmemorable and listless, for just one that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Personally - being into indie games and all that arty stuff - I really like this idea. It should feel like you're actually exploring deep space. No rewarding, picturesque vistas are guaranteed, and you're essentially exploring for the love of exploring - anything else after that is a bonus. It's a humbling comment on the nature of human discovery overall.

That said, said approach only works if the game throws up a planet as 'the one that'll blow you away' and it's fantastic. We don't need worlds that resemble the early E3 footage necessarily, but why not a planet where everything is gigantic, from basic shrubbery to hulking dinosaur-like beasts? Why not an all-water planet where you're forced to precariously land your ship on a tiny outcrop of land, simply because a rare element is deep down in the depths below? Why not a dusty wasteland, a jungle tundra, one with floating pools of water and space worms made of Iridium?

The game's algorithms throw up similar situations to this, but chances are they've barely lingered in the memory, because they're TOO few and far between. If No Man's Sky's planet generation is a ginormous control board of dials and switches (an oversimplification, I guarantee), they needed to tweak the sliders on rarer creatures and more OTT geometry, simply for the sake of variety in the long run.