Exploration is fine, but if it's just something along the lines of "You've found this pretty thing, stare at it for a while!" (as in something that isn't entirely unique, like slightly different coloured creatures or different terrain layouts) before moving onto the next over and over again, that's not very engaging gameplay.
NMS does have things like space ship wrecks, upgrades, relics etc to find so that's good, but it seems most of what you'll find will be similar looking plants, planets and animals with no real interactivity from what I've seen so far.
All they've shown of NMS is stuff from near the outer rim of the galaxy; where the player starts the game.
The closer you get to the centre of the galaxy (which they're highly secretive about and haven't shown any screens/footage of) the more the procedural algorithms start breaking/twisting. Their examples are planets where gravity is broken, where landmasses go into increasingly bizarre shapes, where the procedural flora and fauna starts getting mixed into things which physically don't make sense. The formula start breaking its own rules and tweaking, increasingly so towards the center of the galaxy.
Indeed, this even applies to animal life:
- at the outer rim of the galaxy: the algorithm generates a dog-like animal, and then maps a dog-like animation onto it.
- nearer the center of the galaxy: the algorithm generates a dog-like animal, but procedurally maps the animation skeleton of a worm onto it (tweaking each animation skeleton bit by bit until it has a match). Or the animation of a pterodactyl, or a fish, or whatever. Each planet will be surreal (and apparently it gets pretty unsettling/creepy). So you'll get these truly alien, surreal things happening.
Until this morning I was pretty worried about the variety of skeletons and models, too - but there are two videos that show really weird alien shapes (one is giant sandworms which are literally 100 feet long and the other is these flying wraith-like aliens. There must be countless more types. You can find these if you look at their last couple of YouTube videos.)
All of this stuff is confirmed in written previews by journalists and with quotes from Hello's staff.
Do some reading and your concerns will be alleviated, if only slightly. (It would still be good to see this stuff!)
Edit: in terms of interactivity, there are alien buildings which are also procedurally generated. They contain either high end/special technology or blueprints or stockpiles of resources (which could leap your tech in one go) or language information about the race.
You can shoot into these bases, hack into them, or talk your way into them (trade or persuasion or faction standing). Sean Murray also hinted you can sneak into them.
There are other things on planets, like portals which will leap you (without your ship) to a planet far nearer the galactic center. So you can rummage around, get some high-end resources, then escape.
Apparently they're trying to make the actual act of just surviving really dynamic and fun by itself - that's the core of the game.
Didnt know about all this, guess having a total blackout is not always a good thing...
Game sounds amazing then!
Read the recent press previews - there's some amazing shit in there. My hype for the game didn't really take off until last month when I read them
