The PlayStation 4 is a powerful console and No Man’s Sky is a hugely ambitious game, but if you were to play the latter on a PS4 Neo for example, the noticeable jump in performance could make it a “fundamentally different game,” according to director at Hello Games, Sean Murray.
While speaking with British Red Top, the Daily Star (warning, some NSFW images), Murray didn’t go so far as to say that No Man’s Sky would play completely differently when the PS4 Neo is eventually released, but he did say that it has the potential to really leverage new hardware in a different way to most games.
“If you play another game and if they do a remaster of that game, what they will do is up-res the textures and things like that,” Muray said.
“That’s because the base geometry, the base shape of the world, the way of playing is totally like lost, basically. Hundreds of people have worked on it thousands of hours to create what you see.
“For our game (No Man’s Sky) it’s procedurally generated. So more powerful hardware doesn’t just mean upgraded textures or a higher frame rate. It means we can fundamentally change the experience.”
Essentially what he’s talking about is something much more familiar to PC gamers. If you have a more powerful graphics card, your experience is quite different to that of someone with much weaker hardware. That’s the kind of difference we could potentially see with No Man’s Sky when Neo is released.
Although the method of action is quite different, it’s also not too dissimilar to what we’ve seen in the modding scene over the years. A quick look at a game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, will show you that with some aftermarket downloads, you can make it look far better looking than was ever possible when it was initially created.
Increased foliage density, increased flora variety, and more active environments should all be possible with new PS4 hardware. Murray claims it could make the worlds you visit feel much more immersive, too.
You have to wonder in fact if this is something that No Man’s Sky has already made possible on the PC version of the game — set for release on August 12 — since that generally has improved graphical settings compared to its console counterparts.
Regardless of what it might be in the future though, No Man’s Sky is very pretty right now. How are you guys finding it so far?
