I would like to love this game, but it has some flaws that are hard for me.

1. I can handle the childish style, but if it were for adults not for children.
2. Some plants, animals and races are like puppets of very low quality.
3. I prefer to visit desert planets than living ones, due to all these nonsensical.
4. The colors are too much psychedelic in some natural environments.
5. Modern stations look great until you find a talking puppet parrot.
6. The events are mainly decorative without logical connection or transcendence.
7. There is not charisma in racial beings, just empty "funny" behaviors.
8. I don't have any feeling of belonged, even in my bases.

About the second point, if these problems are hard to fix by procedural techniques, I would prefer a replacement of the living beings with robotic models, like in Horizon Zero Dawn, limiting organic beings spawn to models that look seriously. It is the future. The same for plants, specially avoiding the problematic models with branches and leaves, that usually break the beauty of the landscapes, replacing them with more geometrical and fractal modern designs.

Anyway, I admire the work, the game idea, and his creator.

Oh you ain't seen nothing yet, just wait until you've played it for a while, it probably won't get any better =D

- A few hours in, you notice how familiar everything looks. Everything's procedural, but nothing's really truly unique anyway. There's gonna be a point where you've seen almost everything, and it just becomes stale from then on.

- Base building! Oh joy. I love building cool bases and stuff, but, NMS has the most infuriating issues and bugs (still!) trying to build bases. It never works out for some reason or another. Nothing obstructs, yet still can't place this here - because. That's why. You constantly have to resort to "glitch building" techniques to force the game to let you build.

- The grind. Oh, the grind. Everything needs tons of specific, countless resources, none of which you have on hand when you need them, until endgame. I remember (and still come across) unfinished projects in my 150h save, because I was missing resources back when I started the project, and forgot about it by the time I got the needed resource.


I really want to like NMS way more than I do, but it's a very "casual" game that's also a surprisingly big timesink. I still play it, when friends want to.


But, I found that Elite: Dangerous or Star Citizen are much better at holding my attention than NMS is. E:D got patched into a rather broken state, and had a PR disaster lately, which turned a large portion of their player base away from it, triggering an exodus to Star Citizen. And while SC also isn't done yet, it's got a ton of really awesome locations, and gameplay loops, even stuff outside those loops that you can do, with or without friends. And while SC still has bugs, E:D and NMS aren't all that much better depending on what you're trying to do there. All in all, SC is very cool if you're willing to deal with some issues every once in a while, it may be worth a look if you're after some less cartoony / childish space game.

Well, the bugs in an open world game are not bugs, just part of the game. About the alternatives you say, I think the space is not a funny place to live or play in its crude reality. Those games including X series and others just have basic combat-mine-trade mechanics, there is not life, only dark, cold and money. Yes, some have aliens and chat, but in a mechanical way. There are not good stories nor emotions, and some also have races with puppet look. Mass Effect is a bit different in that sense, but I find it still boring and repetitive, too much marketing thematic, with all that enterprise corporations and raw planets, little living and... also has puppets! It is for what I chose No Man's Sky, because it looks more dynamic and lively, knowing that it is a superficial game. I knew it has its flaws, but I had the hope they would fix them with the pass of time. But they are more focused on adding things than improve the basics. The question is that, when you play it, you see those contrasts between the things that make you love the game, and others that stop your motivation to keep playing.

So, if you want to make a game for all audiences, wonderful, but do not mix things that are for children of 5/8 years, or offer a mode for children and other for adults. Anyway, they know what are doing, is their game and it is very popular now. But it has potential to be a fantastic game, with that unique and funny "The Beatles" style, and you instead find toy parrots or cookie monsters in an office to trade cosmic minerals. I tried to fix it with mods, but there is nothing at this moment. I hope Starfield be, finally, a deep space game where you like to stay, even if you need hundreds of mods to fix the flaws and the bugs.

Yeah. That's been the one thing that always bugged me about X. I played them up to X3, and I modded them so I could have a fleet of big capital ships with fighter squadrons on board, personnel that would do maintenance on the ships and such, and then I would fly one of these capships myself - kind of like the Enterprise, or Battlestar Galactica. Launch fighters when engaging with enemies, launch with my own fighter to join in maybe, and call on the other sister ships for backup if needed - that led to massive huge space battles with multiple capital ships and fighter squadrons, defending a system from terraformer attacks. It was amazing! But not everything I wanted it to be, especially with how artificial everything felt. Much better and more fun with my mods than vanilla, though. Yeah it depends on what you're after. Story-driven games with predetermined story and locations, so, a "space adventure", are much more marketable to the big casual crowd than an open world / open universe would be. Deep characters, big explosions and action - just like the movies! But the universe is just set dressing.

On the other end, you have sandbox open universe games. They live or die, depending on how well their content keeps your attention. Characters and story are the set dressing, a reason for you to do stuff and get you to explore the universe and not feel alone out there. Yeah, feel the same. It is what it is, though - and because it's not what I was looking for, I started playing other games that were more interesting. They can't do that. Well, they can, but a game needs an age rating, having both will make the game unsuitable for children. So, that wouldn't work. And NMS is the most "playful" out of all the space games, for sure. There's so little information on that game out there, I wouldn't hope for anything this specific just yet. But whatever it'll end up being, I hope it's going to be cool, too. Just don't expect too much - remember the Cyberpunk fiasco.



In the meantime, though...
Here's some alternative space games, compared to NMS:


Elite: Dangerous
It's procedural very much like NMS but with more realistic graphics, and very limited content for on foot. You can, by now, walk inside space stations and on planets, but there's very little you can do compared to NMS. It's more focused on flying than ground exploration. You can do less stuff on planets, but way more stuff in space. I'm no expert, but I've got friends who played it before they stopped and picked up SC instead.

Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KGoJkXwUqI


Star Citizen
It's not procedural, yet, so everything looks very unique and the most realistic out of all these games, too. There's also the sheer breathtaking scale of it, huge cities to go explore, with actual shops for buying new clothing, weapons, armor, food, drink and of course, ships and ground vehicles. Some flyable ships are so big, you can land another ship inside of them and walk around, getting lost wandering around 4 decks of it for half an hour, looking for the engine room. Bounty hunting NPCs or other players with ship and FPS combat, trading as a space trucker, or mining minerals with a ship off of asteroids, or by hand out of deep planetary caves. Being a courier, delivering packages to a variety of beautiful, realistic looking locations. There's even some contracts to do that have some story and characters behind them, once you've made a reputation for yourself. And it's got an actual prison system for when things go wrong, and you can either work your time off, or attempt to break out of prison instead. It regularly gets new content and is very realistic, but also very simulation-heavy. You wake up in a hotel room, walk to the elevator, through the city, walk into a train to the space port, go to the ship terminals, select your ship, go to the hangar, open the ship and get inside, walk to the pilot chair, sit down, start the ship systems, request takeoff clearance, wait for hangar doors to open before you retract the landing gear and fly through, going through the atmosphere up into space. Each of these steps you have to play out manually.

Some upcoming gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvoeZAfCfP4
Free trial - no purchase required! - coming November 18th:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FuH77lPzk


Rebel Galaxy
With a bunch of non-procedural systems, the first game is focusing on broadside capship battles and trade runs, dark country music, rough space trucker smuggler stuff. There's a story to follow, but the universe is open to explore - just no planetary exploration here, it's all flying ships. It's a tough and gritty universe, though.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNVe_aiqmXc


Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw
Completely different from the first Rebel Galaxy, Outlaw has full 3D movement in space and puts you in the cockpit of a fighter instead of a capship, with much more hands-on story and more personal ship upgrading gameplay. Fighting off pirates or talking your way out of a fight as you go, it's a pretty cool story-driven open universe game.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmUod-yhB84
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88UyQwj5eE


Check these out, maybe you find one you like =D

Yes, I know you need 30 minutes just to enter the ship with SC. Beth games never disappoint because there are mods to fix all. Just wait ten years for the modders to do it fully. I will take a look to the last two games I don't know. I think Cyberpunk is an awesome work in the design, but I do not connect with the thematic, and I doubt that I play it. The same for FO4. I played previous FOs, but because there were not many open world alternatives in those times. Just waiting for TW4 and Cirilla. It is a risky bet to choose a woman for a game so masculine. I think the key will be to make her a more mature woman, with a harder personality. I also have other games to play of other thematic I like. There is no problem in variety these days.

It was a true pleasure talking with you. Thanks for all that information! :)