+1 (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Thursday, August 11, 2016, 22:34 (2834 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I've put about 8ish hours into it at this point. I think they have a super solid base to work from. The basic UI, and getting people up to speed, needs improvement. It suffers from the minecraft-esque onboarding effect. I really shouldn't have to look up stuff on the web to play, but I have (once) already. And found out that I'm "randomly generated" stuck in my first solar system until I can find a material to make fuel to get to the next system. Due to my own ignorance, the game let me screw myself. :/

That said, so far it's an amazing piece of technical work and a taste of what is to come in the future.

That last sentence of yours really resonates with me. I get the feeling as I'm playing NMS that I'm peering through a portal into the future of video gaming. I spent an hour farting around on an island today and it was glorious.

I think you can do that without feeling like you're wasting time because time doesn’t mean as much in a game that’s impossible to finish. Spending time in the game is its own reward. I also think what slycrel said about the game letting you screw yourself can be an asset. Let me explain.

I spent about an hour lost in a cave the other night and I didn't mind it, even though I nearly drowned trying to swim my way out. Knowing the tech behind the game affects the experience. In a normal game, you can't forget that the devs allowed you to get into situations like that, and that knowledge feeds frustration. In contrast, the worlds in NMS are what they are--they don't exist for your pleasure. God doesn't build escape hatches into real caves, and this NMS cave didn't have an intended exit either (unlike every cave in every Uncharted game). Because of this verisimilitude, my mild panic over being lost had a real edge. I thought to myself, "No youtube video is going to help me out of this." I stopped, took a breath, and asked myself what I would really do. I then started following a wall. Yes, that’s a standard strategy, but my point is any other decent game would've designed the cave to minimize player frustration based on numerous playtests with gamers who know the language of gaming (e.g., the lighting might clue them in on where to go, and they’d never get to the point of thinking about what they’d really do if they were lost).

I believe that the secret sauce of NMS is the awareness the game gives you that this time you’re not in yet another finely calibrated experience--another digital version of the Truman Show starring you, and this lack of artifice, this non-gamey naturalness more than compensates for any gamey aspects, or the lousy UI, the pop-in assets, and so on. NMS isn't (yet?) available in VR, but as is it does a pretty good job of providing a virtual reality psychologically.