Hello Games wants the best for its upcoming No Man's Sky game and it teamed with Dave Gibbons and James Swallow to pave the game with awesome lore.
Both storytellers have significant portfolios under their belts, which guarantees that the title's backstory will be huge in scope and great in relevant detail. Gibbons is the co-author and artist behind Watchmen, and has also worked for Kingsman and 2000 AD. James Swallow is a BAFTA nominee who put his mark on many novels from the universes of Star Trek, Warhammer 40,000 and Deus Ex.
The two renowned authors signed with Hello Games for a comprehensive approach of the game's universe and not for single stories. Shortly put, the duo must pellet gamers with clues to stories and facts that already took place in the No Man's Sky universe.
One of the greatest promises and vulnerabilities of the game is that it is built on mystery. There are no instruments such as lead characters, obvious goals and classic story lines to follow. This can be daunting to some gamers, to such an extent that some even question the game status of the title.
However, Hello Games makes it abundantly clear that this is not a bug, but a feature.
Check out the video embedded at the end of this article to see Sean Murray, one of the game's developers, explain why No Man's Sky puts so much emphasis on lore, as opposed to story.
Murray points out that the wide array of activities in the game (exploration, trading and action) will allow players to craft their own stories, which cannot be scripted. To give players a taste of how a No Man's Sky narrative could look like, Hello Games asked Gibbons and Swallow to work together on a comic that portrays it. The comic is dubbed Adventures in No Man's Sky and comes as a part of the game's Limited Edition.
The message conveyed by Hello Games' efforts is that players are the driving force behind their experience in the game. The almost infinite universe that the gaming company is building is dynamically pieced together, and it is up to players to complete the puzzle by learning more about the game from within. In other words, it is up to each trader, explorer and warmonger in No Man's Sky to find (or ignore) the meaningful clues that the storytellers will embed in the universe.
Gamers will expand the knowledge about the alien races and their world in various ways, such as having dialogues with aliens, reading monoliths and more.
Sci-fi fans and gamers who have a penchant for exploration games should feel giddy right about now. Gibbons' and Swallow's talents have been proven over the years, and we expect that the extraordinary level of detail from their previous work to make its way into No Man's Sky.
Despite not being with the project since its inception, the creative duo will be imbuing the universe with subtle whispers and hints that investigative players can discover.
We look forward to the official launch of No Man's Sky, especially after Hello Games recently published another video detailing how its art and procedural-generated universe come together. If that sparked your interest, check out the new video below.
