You have an excuse for everything, don't you?
This game was promoted as an open universe with quintillions of planets when in facts it's several planets at one time and that's no issue? They don't even orbit around their star, ffs.
It's not about excuses. Sean definitely needs to own up to what he's been facetious about.
What it's about is the experience. I have No Man's Sky booted on my PS4 right now. I can pan the camera and look at the stars. I can press a button to go to the galactic map, go select one of those stars, and warp to it. The star's system is simulated as much as it needs to be
to be fun. And beyond a minute or so's warp time, we don't need to simulate the journey or space between stars, because
that isn't fun.
And orbiting around the star would be cool - I reckon it's very likely they'll patch that in, they're committed to adding gameworld and game system improvements like in Minecraft - but again, it's not 100% necessary for the experience of flying between planets and seeing worlds. You can still have all your fun in the game without this happening.
Well, No Man's Sky's main draw is the vastness of space, exploring celestial bodies. It would be nice to be able to fly at least near a star, watching the glowing hot surface and large fiery eruptions being blasted into orbit. In Elite: Dangerous you could do that, even if you don't stay long enough to destroy your ship
like in this video. In NMS there's only a texture. Kind of a disappointing.
I understand that, but here's the thing:
I've played loads of Elite. Tens of hours. It's a really good game, I really like it. It captures the magnificence of space and systems brilliantly.
But No Man's Sky does it just as well. Well, except for space stations, which I think are lack lustre. But in terms of planets, the 'vastness', the size and scope of celestial bodies? Captures it all just as well as Elite.
Do you know if you can move at light speed like in Elite? In elite the limitation of using hyperdrive to move through systems was actually disappointing because many systems were reachable within ~5 minutes when you begin moving at light speed.
Hmm well in NMS you use a Faster Than Light drive to travel between systems, and it takes 1-4 minutes depending on how many systems you 'hop' at once. I think it's a realistic span of time.