No Man's Sky was a game that had insurmountable levels of hype surrounding it, which inevitably made the crash at launch all the more noticeable. The massively (and we mean massively) open-universe game received record-breaking negative reviews when it first hit shelves, which prompted waves of negative feedback, threats, and even a temporary dev communication shut down. Luckily, the crew at Hello dusted off their knees and got to work and now, it's a game many are excited for again!

One of the common issues gamers had when it first made its debut is the lack of content, the isolation, and the fact that it didn't seem to quite pair up with what was being revealed. Many asked for the multiplayer to be a true co-op experience, when when it was first released - just meant a lonely time in space. Now, the multiplayer is in full force with the release of the game on Xbox One, but apparently - mutliplayer was in the plans all along, and was even supposed to deploy with the vanilla version of the title.

Speaking with The Guardian, Hello Gaem's Sean Murray talked about the not-so pleasant launch period and about one decision in particular which could have caused an insanely different outcome.

“A very light multiplayer was envisioned for launch, and we fought right up until the end to add it, but it was immensely challenging and we knew it was something that only a handful of people would experience due to the size of the universe.

"We later added a version of it for the Atlas Rises update, and it was nice, but not hugely impactful to people’s enjoyment. What players really wanted was the kind of multiplayer we are adding now."

Murray also mentioned to another site, Eurogamer, that there were so many ideas bouncing around before launch. According to the Hello Games boss himself, multiplayer was "just a cool thing" and didn't seem to have much value to the player base as a whole. "It's a big complicated thing for that payoff," he said, "We were fighting for it until pretty much the final hours of the game."

Luckily, No Man's Sky NEXT seems to be realising that original vision and then some.

Posted: Jul 21, 2018 9:07 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: http://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/07/20/no-mans-sky-originally-meant-to-have-multiplayer-at-launch/