I think [url=http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/08/procedural-generation/]this article[/url] sums up my thoughts very well. Procedural generation can be great. But if you procedurally generate everything, it can really get bland. In a handcrafted environment, every space is designed to be played in. In a game like Destiny, you can be assured that every environment is uniquely crafted by artists and level designers who have spent a lot of time thinking how to make every individual environment fun and interesting, both in terms of play and in terms of aesthetics. Procedurally generated environments in contrast are inherently [i]random[/i]. There are certain parameters given to the engine based on which the environments are built, but other than that you never really know what you get. Anyone who has played Minecraft knows what this leads to. The exploration is fun at first, but after a while it gets bland. Even though you have mathematically infinite possibilities, all the game does is repeat the same things over and over again. Once in a while you may get something awesome, like a huge cave with sunlight coming from the above and creating an underground tree in the cave, but most of the time you just get completely uninteresting random formations, hills and valleys as far as eye can see. With the randomness, the spaces really aren't designed to be played in. There has been no human putting all their effort into making it visually appealing. There has been no human placing objects in strategic spots to make it interesting to play. There has just been an algorithm crunching sets of parameters and generating objects and features at random. The quality of whatever you get is not tested by anyone. No one has played there and concluded it's a fun environment. There hasn't been countless iterations trying to make it as good as possible. Procedural generation is all about quantity over quality. The main point of a procedurally generated game has to be somewhere else than in exploration. The quality of the content isn't high enough. Minecraft has the building aspect to it, the ability to modify the environment to your liking. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time playing Minecraft, I never really bother to go exploring anymore because I know that 99% of that time will be spent in completely uninteresting places. What's the point if I already know what I'm going to get? So, what do I think about No Man's Sky? It's certainly an interesting concept, but I've learned that quality is more important than quantity. If you don't have the manpower and time to handcraft huge environments, going completely with procedural generation instead of just making a smaller game is quite a risky move.