It’s Fun to Be Seamless
No Man’s Sky is truly seamless from top to bottom. Not a lot of games these days let you actually travel for reals to that large planet far off in the skybox, but Hello Games doesn’t agree with that model. If you can see it, you can get there at some point. It’s awesome, and helps sell the feeling that you’re an explorer on another world. After all, what’s the point of exploring if you can’t actually explore everywhere?
Destiny, conversely, limits the feeling of space adventure to zones. This would be fine, except for the part where you complete multiple missions on a single planet. You have to complete one mission, wait for the timer to end after the info dump, move the cursor back to that planet, select, then wait for loading and the exposition to do their thing. It gets to be a chore after a while, especially when you can see the stupid Skywatch array. Right. There.
With any luck, Destiny 2 will follow in No Man’s Sky’s footsteps and allow a little more accessibility when it comes to places we see. On a similar note…
Let Us Fly to Our Destination
The phrase “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” is right at home in No Man’s Sky. Traveling to a new planet is fun, bringing either new discoveries, epic space battle, or the chance to contemplate the haunting futility of existence. There’s a chill that comes as you warp to a new planet and see it with your own two eyes for the first time.
When you play missions in Destiny, don’t you feel kind of cool flying through a warp to a brand new planet? Wouldn’t it be great if you could actually fly to planets yourself and see it all through a first person view? It’s already proven to work, thanks to NMS and Star Wars Battlefront. It’d be just plain rad to fly through a portal and see two or three other ships alongside you during a Strike mission, or a Crucible match. Plus, it’d finally give a reason for buying fancy ships.
Make Materials Great Again
In Destiny, you collect a ton of materials and resources. Spinmetal, Spirit Bloom, Helium Filaments, and so on; only thing is, not all of them are really all that useful. Sure, making them all planet exclusive is a good enough incentive to return to past locations, but generally speaking, there’s too many resources yet not enough to make a tangible impact.
No Man’s Sky doesn’t have that problem. Resources can be a source of fuel, a tool for crafting upgrades, or a pricey good on the galactic market. Hello Games made sure that collecting them feels purposeful, and Bungie’s next title would ideally follow suit. Weapon materials can be used for weapons (obviously), but why not have something like Relic Iron used to upgrade your Ghost to increase its tracking range? There’s gotta be some use for them, even if it’s a mechanic as simple as an upgrade.
The Importance of Nature
One of the surprisingly fun parts about No Man’s Sky is going to a planet and watching the wildlife. As long as you don’t mess around with the local fauna, most creatures will be perfectly content to leave you alone and do their own thing. Act like you’re in a National Geographic documentary as you observe the animals and plants, and you’ll see how the experience differs from every other game out there.
There’s surprisingly not much wildlife in the world of Destiny. One gets that the Darkness has probably killed it all, but small natural life touches, even if inconsequential, could give the world a bit more life. Heck, just seeing Hive Thralls scamper around an area would be fun. On top of that, imagine watching the Darkness infect wildlife in real time.
Let Players Chill
In Destiny, you’re constantly fighting the forces of the Darkness. When you spawn, there’s enemies nearby, and at pretty much every turn, they’ll be there waiting for you. That’s totally part of the gig, to be fair, but it’s also a bit annoying that you can’t explore a planet without someone trying to put a claw through your visor every two minutes.
With No Man’s Sky, peace is the (relative) name of the game. You don’t get into trouble unless you go around starting stuff (or someone notices that you have tasty flesh), and it’d be great to feel some of that serene grandeur in a future Destiny title. For Halo 3, there was a Forge mode that allowed you to morph into a Monitor and explore the multiplayer map. It’d be nice if you could just morph into a Ghost (specifically your Ghost) and fly around – be able to just fly. Give players the chance to scan stuff to learn more about the world, take a breather from all the killing, something of a different pace. Sure, there’s Destiny’s social spaces, but warping from planet to zone to planet again is needless busywork.
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