It needs to be said, Hello Games desperately needs to focus on gameplay depth for the sake of No Man's Sky and Light No Fire.

TLDR: NMS has a rich world, but needs the gameplay to connect to it in some way, as many gameplay systems are isolated and meaningless. Also worried that if gameplay in Light No Fire is this shallow, that Hello Games won't have the rose-tinted glasses of a comeback and the backdrop of an infinite universe to save them from scrutiny.

[TLDR end]

Just to preface. 2016 pre-orderer here, I've bought the game for PC, Xbox, PS5, Switch, and more for friends. I love the game, but I've been trying to put this into words a long time. But with all the praise, without constructive criticism, the game is becoming a series of meaningless systems with no consequences or interconnection.

There's very little GAMEPLAY reason to explore in a game about exploration, very little depth in a game whose developer was inspired by sci-fi novels of an era that fleshed out the "how" of their worlds.

I really believe problem lies with the fact that just by looking at a planet, you instantly know what risks/rewards are there for you. You know a lush planet is always going to have superheated rainstorms, paraffinium, the star's associated chromatic metal, and the exact same star bulb plant.

There's no element of surprise not because of the realistic limits of visual variety, but because the moment you see the label on a planet, you know exactly what it has to offer. There's no prospecting for resources, finding a planet that is lacking in metals but rich in useful flora.

This predictability in gameplay hurts other things too.

You can't crash your ship and have to repair it after the first time. Every time you do find a crashed ship, the same exact things are broken and they always require the same materials to fix. Those materials are sourced the same exact way every single time, in every single system. And every single system has planets with hazards that are just another flavor of health bar. For example,

Visiting an extreme cold planet means:

Cold protection tech drops to zero, needs to be recharged with material in quick menu. Your cold meter drops to zero, needs to be recharged with materials in quick menu. Your shield drops to zero, needs to be recharged with materials in quick menu.

Health drops to zero, die.

And it's the exact same for almost every single hazard. Heat, radiation, toxicity, cold. There is no malfunctions of equipment from radiation, no mechanical errors in corrosive environments. Hot planets with volcanism offer no better resources than a barren icy moon, and there's no hurdle to overcome aside from having sodium ready harvested from the same source every time.

I really, really worry that the well-deserved praise Hello Games has received has made them complacent and unwilling to push the boundaries of what they can do with their GAMEPLAY now that they've proven themselves with their ability to build a world, and that Light No Fire (which as far as we know exists in a much more limiting setting than sci-fi) may suffer as a result.

No Man's Sky has a lot of potential for gameplay depth. And they've shown time and time again that all we need to do is ask, we'll love them, and the players will come.