No Man's Sky

When you start the game you’ll be plonked somewhere on the edge of a galaxy. If you want, you can set up camp on the nearest planet and never leave, exploring the land and sea looking for caves to plunder. Planets will vary in size, with Murray describing some as “earthlike” in scale, requiring “an awfully long time” to make a dent in everything there is to see.

By looking further afield you’ll be rewarded with things such as the ability to upgrade your ship, although Murray is keen to stress this will be limited: "We’re trying to create a game about exploration, we don’t want people flying around on a Death Star laying waste to planets."

It’s important to remember that No Man's Sky isn’t Star Wars. There's no good versus evil narrative; no world to save or princess to rescue: “You’re just a very small part of a real, working universe. It’s up to you to make your own story,” explains Murray. “As you go further into the reaches of the universe you might be forced to engage in combat, both in space and on the ground. You don’t know which planets will be friendly and you might not necessarily be top of the food chain. We’re not trying to make Halo but you will sometimes have to fight to survive.”

With no tutorial and different starting points for each player, no two players will have the same experience playing No Man's Sky. As you explore you can share information about what you find by adding it to the galaxy map, although if you stumble upon a utopia you might want to keep it all to yourself. “I love that in the early days of Minecraft nobody knew how to craft things, that was a really bold move,” says Murray. “I don’t think we’d have the guts to do that but we do want to create a real community around the game, with people telling each other about stuff outside of it.”

We also don’t know exactly how the upgrade system will work and while Murray says there’s no traditional multiplayer lobby, you will interact with other human players within the game: “Think about Journey or Dark Souls. I never felt like anyone was impacting on my game in any major way but I knew I wasn’t alone in there and that made it a lot more enjoyable.” There’s also no due date, although the team has been unwittingly steered towards a 2014 release, mainly because the game’s been included in so many ‘most anticipated games of 2014’ lists.

But these holes in our knowledge don’t matter. Much like our universe we might not know absolutely everything about No Man’s Sky, but to us that feels like a mission accomplished.