No Man's Sky screenshot featuring a brilliant sunset

While No Man's Sky is fairly well known for its gorgeous art style and "18 quintillion planets", I'm fairly sure you'd be hard pressed to actually describe what's it all about, and more importantly, what exactly can you do on your journey, besides poking space-cows.

With the release date creeping ever closer the folks behind No Man's Sky have decided to create a series of trailers showcasing each portion of the game and hopefully explaining, once and for all, what exactly No Man's Sky is all about. Here's the first of these trailers, titled simply as Exploration:

 

"There are 18 quintillion planets in the game. Even if each planet was visited at a rate of one per second, it would take five billion years to explore them all – by which the Sun in our solar system would have burnt out, essentially giving the game a near infinite number of worlds to explore!

To help guide players through such a vast number of locations No Man’s Sky has an overarching goal of reaching the centre of the universe, where there are more bountiful resources and more challenging locations to discover. This, however, is just a guide, and players are free to explore the game however they like."

As someone that loves games focused around exploration and passive storytelling, the very premise behind No Man's Sky has me incredibly excited. However, the sheer amount of planets available is actually filling me with more worry than glee, mostly because you can't craft "18 quintillion" planets without making them fit certain categories and types, all of which are things that can quickly turn an unknown, alien planet into something easily recognizable, and thus a lot less exciting as well.

Whether my worries are correct or simply Spore-induced paranoia, I don't know, but I do hope No Man's Sky ends up delivering on all of the hype it has created. Its certainly a unique idea, and with an art style that stylish it would be a damn shame to have it end up any other way. Whatever the case may be, we'll find out on August 9/10 when No Man's Sky finally releases for the PC and PS4.

No Man's Sky screenshot featuring alien creatures stampeding