Shots fired: Bungie just took a jab at No Man’s Sky


Image: arstechnica.com

There are a lot of similarities between No Man’s Sky and Destiny. Both the games have a sci-fi and futuristic setting, and they also have the intergalactic travel feature. However, there is another similarity between the two games which was first brought to attention by Alex Newhouse of Gamespot.

In his article for Gamespot last month, Newhouse mentioned that the UI design of No Man’s Sky was inspired by Destiny. Although the topic is still debatable, he mentioned that the design of the upgrade tree and the menu items look pretty similar to that of Destiny.

Image: www.forbes.com
Image: www.forbes.com

Bungie has also noticed the same thing, and their Lead Designer, Steve Cotton, spoke about No Man’s Sky in an interview with Metro. The interview was actually meant to discuss Destiny‘s upcoming expansion Rise of Iron, but the interviewer went on to ask Cotton’s view on No Man’s Sky.

Cotton, who knew everything about the UI story jokingly mentioned that the developers of No Man’s Sky has copied the UI design of Destiny.

“No, someone stole something from Destiny,” he said following it up with a laugh.

Image: www.gamespot.com
Image: www.gamespot.com

On the other hand, Cotton also mentioned that Bungie doesn’t believe in taking the ‘procedural generation’ route and their designers hand craft their games rather than using an algorithm.

This, he believes, makes their game more interesting and unique. He added that each and every character in their games are actually placed intentionally by the design due to a reason. He also said that Bungie doesn’t believe in creating just a huge open world without interesting things in it. He thinks that players would get bored in such a situation.

Image: derstandart.at
Image: derstandart.at

However, Cotton clarified that he doesn’t hold any grudge against No Man’s Sky, but added that games which are not hand crafted fail to deliver memorable moments.

“For us it’s not good enough to just make a bunch of real estate. Real estate has to be really well thought out, so you really try to create experiences. Everything is very… intentional. And so when you’re hand-crafting and – no offence against No Man’s Sky – but when it’s not done by someone by hand it’s hard to get experiences that are memorable.”

Image: www.destinythegame.com
Image: www.destinythegame.com

Destiny‘s upcoming DLC Rise of Iron is scheduled to release on September 20 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.