They are going the No Man's Sky route. An incredible game years after it was released.

People always reference No Man's Sky and praise the state it eventually made it to, but even that updated state was not the game that was promised and hyped pre-release.

Some of the "missing features" were eventually implemented, but MANY were not. Instead, they pivoted into implementing different things that were not part of that initial hype cycle, and implemented enough of them that they hoped people would forget about what the game was originally claimed to be.

And apparently it worked, because people always talk about how No Man's Sky got "fixed" without acknowledging that huge, major chunks of that initial promise were never in fact developed.

For all of the amazing work that Hello Games has put into No Man's Sky, one change for me that I didn't like is that now you are basically thrown into instances where you are meeting other players.

The space stations are now major hubs and the Atlas even more.

Part of the experience was to feel like you are out in the middle of nowhere. All alone. And it was like that up until the last few releases where they updated the player spawn locations.

Now it seems like when you jump in, you are likely going to end up meeting other players.

What was No Man's Sky meant to be?

I genuinely hope this is correct.

However NMS is an open-world exploration game. I worry that with Cyberpunk 2077 being fairly linear / story based, they won't make the same investments that Hello Games did re: adding tons of new features.

Can they pull it off though? NMS is an exploration game in procedurally generated world. CP2077 is all about the story. They'd need to put a crazy amount of new content in a DLC to get people to play it.