No Man's Sky dev: 'this maybe isn't the game you imagined from trailers'

Tomorrow is the release date of No Man's Sky. And yet, even this close to launch, people are still asking: just what is No Man's Sky? What do you do? Well, the game's co-director has an answer, though it might not be what you imagined.

Like, literally. That is what he said. "[No Man's Sky] maybe isn’t the game you imagined from those trailers. If you hoped for things like PVP multiplayer or city building, piloting freighters, or building civilisations… that isn’t what NMS is," Murray wrote on the game's official site. "At launch though, it’s an infinite procedural sci-fi-space-survival-sandbox unlike anything you have ever played before".

"Sitting down to write the first lines of code five years ago, I had such a clear picture in my mind of an emotion I wanted you to feel. To wander around an alien planet, and to feel you had discovered it," Murray wrote. "You guys, that is what you do in No Man's Sky"!

Of course, that doesn't mean that how the game exists now is how it will always be. A day-one patch has fundamentally re-written how the game works, including new story elements, a new way of generating the universe, animal taming, and more. So while No Man's Sky sounds like an exploration-focused game for now, that could change, and fast. Personally, I like the way Murray sums it up:

"It’s a weird game, it’s a niche game and it’s a very very chill game".

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Sam Prell

Sam is a former News Editor here at GamesRadar. His expert words have appeared on many of the web's well-known gaming sites, including Joystiq, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, and G4 Media, among others. Sam has a serious soft spot for MOBAs, MMOs, and emo music. Forever a farm boy, forever a '90s kid.