Shots fired!
Destiny's Head of Design speaks about No Man's Sky's generation on procedure and their UI aesthetics.
Come to think of it, No Man's Sky and Destiny are very much alike. They both have intergalactic travel and a futuristic sci-fi theme. They also share another concept which Hello Games reportedly might not recognize in excitement.
This was first detected by Alex Newhouse of Gamespot, back in July, it is reported that Destiny is the inspiration for No Man's Sky's user interface to a level that it can be considered questionable. From menu items to the upgrade tree, the designs seem to look the same with Destiny's designs - this has not passed unnoticed under Bungie's nose.
Steve Cotton, World Design Lead for Destiny, opened up a topic about No Man's Sky on a dialogue with Metro. The main topic was all about Rise of Iron, an upcoming expansion pack for Destiny when things make an interesting detour as the interviewer asked about Cotton's comment on No Man's Sky. Without surprise, Cotton knew about the whole UI debacle and made a joke implying that Hello Game's copied their UI design for Destiny.
GameCentral: Have you played No Man's Sky?
Steve Cotton: I haven't no, it came out right as we were leaving to come here.
GC: I was playing it and I knew they'd stolen the UI from somewhere, and it took me ages to realise it was Destiny.
SC: No, someone stole something from Destiny?! [laughs]
On the serious side, Cotton emphasized that handcrafted designs are much more interesting and unique as compared to a 'mathematically generated' logic driven game Cotton adds that creating a huge sandbox world does not automatically mean that it is enough for good experience and it is imperative that you must fill that world with interesting things to do -- I wrote a review on No Man's Sky, and this is exactly what I meant about me not being hooked long enough.
Cotton said that he has nothing against Hello Game and No Man's Sky but he feels that it is hard for the game to give memorable experiences because the logic has lacking manual crafting.
Game Central: In terms of the open world design I think a lot of people just wanted it to be bigger, so what were you reasons for focusing on smaller, tighter maps?
Steve Cotton: That's a really good question. We talk about this a lot. 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.
Destiny: Rise of Iron will launch for the PS4 and Xbox One on Sept. 20.
Here are the trailers from both sides, you decide if No Man's Sky copied the UI.
Have you decided which is better? For your thoughts, please feel free to drop a comment below.
