Focus on the Facts
One thing that has been noticed about the hype surrounding No Man’s Sky, is that a lot of it is about features that were never mentioned. No Man’s Sky will provide a seemingly limitless number of open worlds, yes, but there are limits to what you can do on and around these planets. The focus of the game is on exploration and discovery, but there are some fans eagerly awaiting this release expecting something more akin to that of say Minecraft or Starbound.
It’s easy to see a game with such huge possibilities and begin to conjure up even more. Some of the biggest ones that prospective players are looking forward to are huge battles and tons of crafting. While there is some resource collection and upgrading, you won’t be building castles or robots, nor will you be custom building a ship to take to the skies. Most of that is handled for you with a great degree of pure randomness. As far as huge battles go, you can pick fights with some of the wildlife which will in turn earn you the attention of the Sentinels, but these won’t be huge, Star Wars-esque battles. It will mostly be you taking pot shots at much more powerful machines and making a run for safety.
If you continue to remind yourself that a majority of your time will be spent alone, wandering and interacting with whatever you may find, then you’ll be fine. But if you’re looking for a space opera or something with a lot more control, then you may want to start tempering your expectations now.