CaitSeith said:
It was one of the most over-hyped indie game launches. For years, people were talking about it like if it was going to be the arrival of game-Christ, and it was going to exonerate us of all our gaming sins (or, as they put it, "challenge the video game industry's Status Quo").
Maybe it's just that I'm a mere mortal, but my mind just couldn't comprehend what exactly they were expecting from the game.
I think that a lot of the hype over
No Man's Sky was generated because it is a console exclusive to Playstation and not available on Xbox, and after a few disappointing Playstation exclusives that received similar hype (e.g. Driveclub), a lot of the pre-release hype for NMS was partly hyping up the Playstation brand in comparison to Xbox who wouldn't get this game, irrespective of the actual game itself, and was also projection from Playstation fanboys who took a few sound-bites from early dev videos and ran with it to create the best game ever that Xbox scum would never be able to touch with their filthy peasant fingers and would be totally jealous of because it's only available on Playstation (and Microsoft Windows, but lets forget about that because it's not convenient in the Console War).
I've been following this game for almost since it's first teaser because it seems like quite an interesting concept for an Indie game and harks back to older games that I enjoyed, but the vast majority of the overblown hype I've read has been from Playstation fans (via GameFAQS) who have seemed to have taken an interesting concept and weaponised it for the Console Wars just because it's a Playstation console exclusive, irrespective of the developer's stated vision for the game, and have mutated it in to a every genre AAA game triumphant Sony (always wins baby), PS4 exclusive, suck it Xbots! Second Coming of Christ.
I've no way of proving this, but I honestly believe that if
No Man's Sky was just a PC exclusive, or if it had been from the very beginning an all format game, then it wouldn't have been as hyped up as it has been and would have been better received as the modest yet ambitious Indie game that it is (and always has been if you listed to the people who made it).
On the other hand, I also think that Sean Murray got a little bit carried away and started Molyneuxing a bit when his humble game got thrust into the spotlight and started receiving hype and accolades faster than he and his tiny team could game develop, but that is often the way with small British developers and I don't think that ambition and overreaching vision should be held against people in the same way as if they actually told a massive bare face lie and set out to deferral people for moneys from the get go (which is the impression I've got of the Cast Down From Heaven Pariah that is Sean Murray from reading message boards since NMS's pre-release).
As in many fields, getting noticed and picked up by a massive corporation (e.g. Sony) is both a blessing and a curse for a small creator... of anything, not just games or media.