Makabriel said:
Gorrath said:
I think people are getting too caught up on the semantics of what constitutes a "lie." Even giving Hello Games a lot of leeway due to the way things invariably and inevitably change between promotion and release of a game, I don't think it can be successfully argued that they weren't disingenuous. Whether anyone wants to call that "lying" is hardly important. They mislead, and seemingly with deliberate intent. It's one thing for one's ambition to outstrip their ability to produce; if you step up and own this fact people will forgive you. It's another to continuously misrepresent that you can't deliver what you are saying you can.
All that said, I have nearly 60 hours in NMS and enjoy the game. I still think they were being dishonest about the product though and that people are playing semantics saying that no lies occurred.
The best part of that video is the comparison to Bioshock Infinite. There were game play walkthroughs and complete concepts the were shown that never made it anywhere near release. And no one really cared, simply because it was a great game. Barely anyone batted an eye about it. I think if NMS was "Better" the same thing would have happened.
The big difference I see between Bioshock and NMS is that, at least as far as I know, the Bioshock team didn't out and out say you could do things that they knew you'd never be able to do. I don't care that NMS has no multiplayer. Frankly, what would anyone even DO with multiplayer in NMS? There's no mechanic for interacting with other players even if you could see them but one shouldn't say that you can and will totally be able to do stuff that you won't be able to do if you know or highly suspect those things won't be in the game.
All that said, I do agree that NMS wouldn't be catching a lot of flack for missing stuff if what was left was a really good game. But there's the rub, a LOT of what was promised (but not the multiplayer, imo) would have made for a better game. More interactive animals and scenery, complex crafting, huge fleet battles, effective cross-system trading, strong factional benefits and drawbacks were all confirmed to be in the game to one degree or another and all are more or less not present at all. If some of these things had been missing the game could still be great but missing ALL of them really hurts the gameplay. It's one thing to miss out implementing some things you wanted to do, it's another to bang on about a bunch of stuff that you know or should have known would not really be in the game. Honestly the lack of multiplayer is the LEAST of NMS' issues.
That's a long winded way of me saying that I agree, had NMS been great even if it was missing "promised" content, there wouldn't be near this level of shitstorm. But then the whole reason the game is kinda shit to most people is, in part, precisely because that stuff is missing.