The Aliens Aren’t Smart
Another cool thing that Hello Games brought up about No Man’s Sky was the fact that the alien NPCs you spoke to in the game would show awareness of the star system they were in, what planets were nearby, and what resources were available to them. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all in the game. After spending about 30 hours with No Man’s Sky, jumping from system to system, interacting with these advanced lifeforms only gives me access to scenarios which repeat themselves, followed by a choice between three dialogue options that would determine whether I gained standing with that race or not.
According to an interview with the PlayStation Blog, Murray stated that the NPC reactions would be “procedurally generated.”
“Having said that, being No Man’s Sky, there is a procedural element to your interactions. The AI you talk to will know the name of the planet you’re on and will reference it. They’ll reference wanting certain things based on the environment they’re in. They’ll know if it’s cold, or hot, or whatever. You’ll see a reasonable amount of variety — it’s not just pre-baked dialogue.”
Ironically, “pre-baked dialogue” seems to be exactly what we got in No Man’s Sky. None of the aliens that I’ve come across have shown any interest in the Gold and Emeril-filled planet that sits right next to their space station, and are happy to pay me vast sums of units for a ‘valuable’ resource that’s available in abundance just a few hundred parsecs away.
