While the big selling points for No Man's Sky last year were its massive size and procedural generation, we now know what you actually do in that mammoth space: explore, gather resources, and record what you find on each planet. Given the game's massive scale, it's going to have to make cataloging the universe a very fun experience if players are going to keep picking up their controllers. Thankfully, director Sean Murray thinks that the tools you'll be using will help, because they trap into a pleasantly familiar concept.
"When I've been exploring for ten hours, or 100 hours, this becomes your Pokedex basically," says Murray, in regards to the journal where all the data you collect about the universe's many, many worlds is recorded. "[It's] your intergalactic Pokedex of everything that you've discovered: all the places that you've been, screenshots of all the planets that you've been on, the ability to set waypoints and go back there, that kind of thing."
Not only does it keep that wealth of information organized for you to see later - it also taps into that all-powerful gotta catch em all instinct that drives us to collect, minus the fantasy dogfighting. Plus, it has a practical application, helping you move through the universe with ease. Also, it's a great memento to show how far you've come. "It becomes a very cool thing," says Murray. We'll see if we agree when the game launches sometime in the (hopefully) near future.
