Thing is, they've actually kinda shown snippets of combat in the trailers. Just not whole battles or anything. I think this game is gonna get a lot more interesting when people start streaming it. This game might actually be the perfect fit for PS4 streaming because you'll see completely different worlds from everybody. That's what's so cool about the number of systems and worlds -- it's possible that even years after this came comes out you might see people posting screenshots of places nobody has seen before.
As for the repetitiveness of the landscape, that really depends on the quality of the procedural generation. Is every planet just going to be a collection of similar mountains, similar forests, or deserts? Or will there be multi-biome worlds? That all depends on what they have in the algorithm. However, we've already seen planets that have oceans AND land AND caves. That suggests to me the worlds that do have life will be host to multiple ecosystems and such. I don't know about you, but that in itself might be interesting enough for me. Just spend hours and hours checking out a cave, or some kind of underwater rift valley.
Interesting question: how deep will oceans be? Will I be able to take certain vehicles underwater and spend just as much time exploring the depths of oceans? Is there gonna be some Challenger Deep type shit in this game?
And yeah it would be really nice if we at least saw what an intelligent settlement looks like. Part of me really hopes intelligent life forms are procedurally generated too. At the very least they could procedurally generate what they look like, what they trade, what factions they're with, and maybe even what their buildings look like, based on combinations of assets. It all just depends on how much variation you can get from the finite amount of assets Hello Games is making.
...oh, and sooner or later Elite Dangers is going to do basically all the same things No Man's Sky is trying to do, except with basically AAA graphics. The only downside is Elite will be online-only.
As for the repetitiveness of the landscape, that really depends on the quality of the procedural generation. Is every planet just going to be a collection of similar mountains, similar forests, or deserts? Or will there be multi-biome worlds? That all depends on what they have in the algorithm. However, we've already seen planets that have oceans AND land AND caves. That suggests to me the worlds that do have life will be host to multiple ecosystems and such. I don't know about you, but that in itself might be interesting enough for me. Just spend hours and hours checking out a cave, or some kind of underwater rift valley.
Interesting question: how deep will oceans be? Will I be able to take certain vehicles underwater and spend just as much time exploring the depths of oceans? Is there gonna be some Challenger Deep type shit in this game?
And yeah it would be really nice if we at least saw what an intelligent settlement looks like. Part of me really hopes intelligent life forms are procedurally generated too. At the very least they could procedurally generate what they look like, what they trade, what factions they're with, and maybe even what their buildings look like, based on combinations of assets. It all just depends on how much variation you can get from the finite amount of assets Hello Games is making.
...oh, and sooner or later Elite Dangers is going to do basically all the same things No Man's Sky is trying to do, except with basically AAA graphics. The only downside is Elite will be online-only.