Also, today is officially No Man's Sky Mega Press Article Release Day! LOADS of info on the game, with the general consensus being that "there's actually a game there!" and "NPCs!" as well as "A dinosaur ate me!" and the occasional "I got lost in a cave and froze to death."

The Giant Bomb interview was pretty great (I forgot the link).

Things I've learned (though, really, pay your respects to these lucky reporters by reading their articles):

- There are alien monoliths throughout the game that can teach you words.
- Words? Yup, as you learn words you can use them to communicate with NPCs, who will trade resources or ask for help in exchange for tech.
- The graphics have been dramatically improved since the last videos were released.
- The core gameplay loop is --> earn money (either via discovering new alien species and worlds aka being an explorer, stealing from NPCs aka being a space pirate, or trading resources with NPCs aka being a trader; you can do all three, there's no classes or whatever) --> buy, gather, or steal resources --> use resources to upgrade your tech so that you can explore more distant planets, survive longer in harsher environments, mine more advances resources, or get a bigger and better ship --> repeat. This is pretty much what we always thought it would be, but they've apparently put a bit of depth into it so there are many layers to this, and you have to swap back and forth (for instance, if you have thermal protection for an ice world, it will make you more susceptible on a desert world, so you have to replace it with cooling systems).
- The ratio of dead / mineral worlds to life worlds is roughly 9:1.
- Life worlds do have ecosystems and there are predator animals and they'll hunt and eat prey animals (or you, sometimes).
- Caves can be labyrinthine and are easy to get lost in.
- The worlds intentionally do not have climate zones, so landing anywhere on a world is pretty much the same, environmentally, as landing elsewhere on that world.
- Distances between worlds are generally closer than realistic (though there are outliers) so that you can keep playing rather than pausing for an hour every time you change planets.
- Despite the theme of the game being exploration, there is a loose plot and you can have a permanent effect on the galaxy if you so choose (extent unclear; it's mentioned that you can destroy starbases or turn the tide in a regional space conflict).
- NPC space pirates will totally attack you.
- Terrain is destructible, though that destruction is only temporary and will disappear if you leave the world and then come back (this is not new info).
- Larger spaceships have damage registries by section. I only saw this in a video and it was not discussed, but it looked like you could shoot out cargo pods from a freighter one by one and then fly past them to collect whatever resources were just released into the vacuum of space.
- The game looks awesome (okay, I knew this already, too)!

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Rare spaceship, that is.

edit: I don't actually know that for a fact; I'm trusting some guy who said as much on Reddit.

It's irrelevant, as I don't own a PS4 to play it anyway.

It seems sort of like a 3D Starbound, albeit with less of a focus on crafting. I could totally be down with that. Starbound is definitely my favorite game of the survival/crafting/exploration genre, and I could see myself really enjoying a 3D version of that (especially one as pretty as No Man's Sky seems to be). I'll wait until it comes out and let someone else bite the bullet and test how it'll run on a Surface Pro 4. I suspect it'll have to be pretty ugly to run, which would defeat a lot of the enjoyment of the game.

I'm definitely more interested than I was previously after the new info.

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It's irrelevant, as I don't own a PS4 to play it anyway.

It's on Windows as well, coming to GOG and Steam.

It's irrelevant, as I don't own a PS4 to play it anyway.

It's on Windows as well, coming to GOG and Steam.

I'll wait until it comes out and let someone else bite the bullet and test how it'll run on a Surface Pro 4. I suspect it'll have to be pretty ugly to run, which would defeat a lot of the enjoyment of the game.

Looking at it now, I guess it's not totally clear. My SP4 is my only computer. I love it to death, but it's not a gaming machine by any stretch (although I am consistently impressed by how well it does). I'm not sure how taxing No Man's Sky will be, but someone will test it on an Surface Pro 4 within the first week. I'll wait for that to see if it's worth buying or just waiting until I actually get a PS4.

Steam has a refund feature, so you can just see if it blows, or if there are settings you can put on to make it usable.

Or, since it's on GOG, you can get the game from someone, install it, see if it works, then if it does buy it if you're into having a moral compass.

Steam has a refund feature, so you can just see if it blows, or if there are settings you can put on to make it usable.

I always forget about that. /: