No Man's Sky: Procedurally Generated Universe?

Term of the Year: Procedural Generation

I've heard this more this past few days than I have...well ever. This game sounds incredible, but I just can't see something like this delivering, not yet. An entire universe full of galaxies to be explored...if you can see a star you can fly to it and visit the solar system it is in? Oh...and it is all procedurally generated. Which basically means the game is building it's own stuff at random based on parameters given to it...from what I can gather. Has any other game attempted this before? At this scale or at all?

Don't get me wrong, I think this sounds pretty awesome, but it seems too big to get it right on the first try here. This could be a stepping stone for the future though. I just cannot imagine the wacky bugs that could be created from this thing, but I am excited to see where it goes.

Either way it looks like space is back on the menu for the PC, lots of things to look forward to.

Procedural generation is becoming really common in indie games, and has been common for quite some time. Dwarf Fortress, for example, is procedurally generated. It generates the world, generates the years for the world to age in, generates random events that occur in the world, all before plopping you into the game.

Honestly, the idea works better for some games and not others. Setting up a base in a procedurally generated world (like DF) isn't too shabby of an idea. Exploring a procedurally generated world (or universe) on the other hand doesn't sound too hot and sounds more menial than entertaining. Without hand-crafted content mixed in, it could get old fast.

It's gonna end up like Spore, I wish it could deliver on its promises but if I've learned anything from countless hype and indie games is that they practically never deliver.

The game itself just doesn't look all that appealing to me.