Feedback on something... [Discussion]
Hello!
I'm not here to hate on no Man's Sky, I'd genuinely love your feedback on this...
I want to compare No Man's Sky and the Witcher 3.
Bear with me...
Ok so, picture this, you're playing as Geralt and you're in a forest hunting a deer.
It's raining, it's dark, you spot a deer. You edge nearer [not like that] the dark and rain masking your approach, you raise your bow, you're about to loose an arrow, when all of a sudden, a pack of wolves run across the screen making a beeline for the deer, the deer spots them and runs off, wolves in pursuit...
What we have there are a bunch of 'systems' interacting with one another to create the illusion of a living world. We have time of day, weather, animal AI, predator/prey behavior, and me.
All these systems interacting with one another to create this emergent gameplay.
And it isn’t just wildlife, villagers, bandits, monsters, guards, all have schedules or behaviors that can clash. And it is phenomenal.
By comparison... No Man's Sky... the game has systems, day and night, wildlife, NPC's, environmental hazards, ships, bases, pirates, weather [just to name a few] but [and it's a big but] their interactions as so much narrower. Each system almost exists independantly of one another and only interact with YOU, the player. Animals fight occasionally, sentinels can chase creatures or you, pirates attack freighters. The difference is that most of these things only “wake up” in relation to you, rather than running on their own schedule when you’re not involved. The result is that, even with all the updates, NMS can still feel a little staged, like a universe that exists only because you’re looking at it. And the trouble is, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And the whole game starts to feels a bit artificial.
TLDR: Witcher 3 makes clever use of intersecting systems to feel like a living world, whereas No...