No Man’s Sky Graphics Branded “Last-Gen”

Mere weeks away from the release of Hello Games’ hotly anticipated procedurally generated space explorer No Man’s Sky, reports are emerging from those lucky enough to get an early glimpse at the game.

One cheeky gamer even streamed their No Man’s Sky play, though was shut down within minutes of going online. However, a few people witnessed the stream before it was banned and rushed to NEOGaf to share their early impressions.

CAMPBLACKMAMBA24 reported:

“Graphics were Last-Gen like. Nothing like say The Witcher 3 or Uncharted 4. You will hear the complaints trust me. 

Couldn’t tell as far as the fps.”

GribbleGrunger, who briefly caught the stream, shared the following assessment from a user who watched a significant portion of the video:

“It was like six minutes and he went through his inventory, showed the controller layout, it was nighttime and windy didn’t see any combat or any other life forms…the planet was lush with vegetation and it had a lot of iron deposits…he had an objective on the lower right hand of the screen there were like mountain cliffs he was trying walk up…

I don’t remember the controls but I know what his objective was he had to find silicate to replenish his fuel tanks to get his ship working there was iron all over the place and he did the scan and a blue resource icon showed up in his fov that said resources and he was trying to get there but he barely did anything cause by the time he went through his inventory showing off that screen and his controls layout he didn’t play very much he got banned so quick.”

It’s doubtful anyone expected No Man’s Sky to have the graphical fidelity of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – this is a game that features a procedurally generated galaxy, full of billions of planets, of course – so, given the beautiful art direction that we’ve seen of the game so far, the only thing that could potentially impair its aesthetic would be low frame-rate, a feature that it seems could not be divined from the brief stream.

No Man’s Sky is set for release on 9th August in North America and 10th August in Europe for PlayStation4, with unconfirmed reports that the PC version has been delayed by a couple of days.