Not that it excuses Hello Games, but they aren't exactly a large company or anything either, and ultimately I always felt like they were saying seemed crazy to promise given their resources.
Wouldn't they're being published by Sony have given them a lot more resources though? (I'm no game dev, could be wrong). Though even then, they were promising this stuff before that happened pretty much.
It depends on the terms of the deal. And usually hiring talent in the middle of development doesn't help a ton, as you both have to ramp them up and you are probably "settling" for candidates rather than getting top end talent.
Uh... if having Sony publish them doesn't help a ton, why do it? I assume the only reason to due so would be to increase profit, and with higher expected profit, presumably, they'd be able to buy more resources. TBH at this point I'm just asking cus I'm curious how this part of game development works, not sat all regarding the actual example .
Being published helps the following: Marketing/Hype - This is the most important part of what a publisher does, as they are basically investing in your product and are incentivized to put more money behind it to make it work so they can make a profit (as the developer, you normally sign over a portion of your post launch revenue to them) Distribution - You kind of need SONY if you want it to be on PS4 (though it's not the only way) Resources - It does help to have more money to pay for stuff (including more staff) The problem is that human resources added in that manner tends to have diminishing returns because you are trying to do it quickly and there are costs to introducing someone new to a project, especially one of with kind of technical challenge.
Any "reviewer" who speaks of NMS not being a multiplayer should not be listen to, they did not understood the game at all. Im 23hours into the game with just 4 solar systems and 15+- planets visited and still finding new stuff, having fun and getting amazed by everything. Yes, i was expecting a shiton more to be honest, almost all official "real gameplay" trailers about this game are lies but its really evident they made a last minute cut to most of the mechanics and depth, there are rumors sony forced them to downgrade the game so it worked on consoles and also forced them to downgrade the PC version to be at the same lvl, thats why everything is lacking. There are very redundant things you have to do to get stuff done that proves something is missing.
It's a game about exploration, you dont get weirder Bane Shift the closest to the center you are, you find weirder Bane Shift the further of the storyline you go. Advices: If you find a boring planet, leave it, if the solar system is boring, go to the next one. There is nothing you can only find in one planet. I do recommend to at least land and check the fauna tho. If a planet is too extreme to survive and explore comfortably just skip it, you will be able to build stuff to breath underwater or resist toxins/radiation/heat/cold/etc later so its not worth it to burnout your interest trying too hard there. Dont just be the good guy, go be a pirate too, there are several things you can only get by being the bad guy. Dont watch videos in youtube about it, dont spoil the experience. If you have it, smoke it. Everything is more fun if you are high If you find a way to "exploit" the game, dont, enjoy it the normal way
I've just done about 2 planets. Starter was boring. Second one gave me a shitton of gold and petroleum underground. Killed a sentinel. Only problem I had was that I got stuck in the vendor screen, which was a bummer. So I can't seem to trade my stuff. Other than that, I got headbutted by a piece of Bane Shift that found out that my deathray is not to be messed with
It seems kinda disappointing from what I've seen of it. What can you really do other than gather and sell stuff?
Probably more likely it's a reference to the actual book series. (Seriously, read it, even if you think the movie is better the series is far longer and a ton more happens).
Look.. its an exploration game, noone really knew how to play it and there is no tutorial basically so i think the "not knowing" is part of the experience, but its fun, its the first game i buy in years so i dont know if its worth the 60$ i have nothing to compare it to, so far with 28hrs played i can tell its fun. It seems like they needed an additional 2 or 3 months to be able to deliver what the trailer promised and because they run out of time they released the "basic mechanics game" only, which is still fun but you should wait at least til september to see how it evolves. If you do buy it anyway then you should expect to feel like it to be a "safari exploration" game where the reward is the finding of something cool and in which anyother mechanic, anything you interact with or experience is a plus that makes the safari better.
Still having fun with this, i found a mod that allows low flight (the game has an autopilot that forces your ship to not-crash and cant go lower than 30meters from the ground, couldnt even look down to see where i was parking), that fixes 50% of the game's problems, my fps are always 60+ and the ship responds smooth as it should without bouncing Also they keep releasing patches fixing lots of stuff so its a matter of time til they can jump to the "adding features" and "reviewing balance/prices" part. This game will be what they promised in 3 or 4 more weeks im pretty sure.
I keep thinking that No Man's Sky is the kind of game that would only appeal to most people if it were playable in a virtual reality environment. Unfortunately the tech just isn't there yet. But in a decade or so, mark my words, people will look back on No Man's Sky and see a game that was ahead of its time.