Man, the negativity and cynicism towards this game can reach astounding levels at time. All you people who think this game sounds pointless, boring and bland must have an astonishing lack of imagination. Or perhaps you just don't understand how the game actually works, which is probably very likely in a lot of cases. Procedural doesn't mean random. Procedural doesn't mean bland. It can, but it all depends on the algorithms used to shape the world. And judging by what we've seen of this game so far, theirs seem pretty damn awesome.
Something people need to realize is that our actual, REAL world is basically procedurally generated. Our planet can hold water in liquid form because of its distance from the sun and some other factors. This water means that life had a chance to evolve here. What plant and animal life exists in different regions depends on climate, the shape of the landscape, etc. The shape of the landscape is created by various processes over time. Etc, etc. Everything is the result of something else, in many "layers" of cause and effect on different scales. What Hello Games are doing is pretty much the same thing, but through a set of complicated mathematical algorithms. For any point in the galaxy they can calculate exactly what should be there, from the planetary type down to the individual plants on that very hill in that very region of the planet. Again, everything is the result of something else, in many "layers" of computation on different scales. The output of one algorithm is fed into the next, and then the next, and so on. In the end you have a "machine" that takes a 3D coordinate as input and spits out what should be at that exact spot. And it will always produce the exact same result given the same input. This is not random, it's procedural.
Now, how good the end result looks of course depends on how good the algorithms are, but we're not talking about some black magic here.
And people who say stuff like they'd rather see 100 interesting planets than a quintillion (or 18) boring ones clearly don't understand all this at all. Why would those 100 be more interesting? They'd still be procedurally generated, there'd just be less of them. Hand-crafting even ONE decently sized planet would be a completely insane task for any dev team, or even all teams that have ever existed put together. This game is about exploring the unknown (literally), and that requires the approach they're taking here. As such, why would they limit themselves to less planets than their system allows? There's simply no point.
Personally, I think discovering and exploring strange, alien worlds for the first time (ever, by anyone) sounds completely amazing. Containing my excitement for this game is difficult.
Do we know many details about this yet? From what I've read, players are trying to make their way to the center of the galaxy for some reason. I would be really interested in any details on how this fits into the "billions of planets" piece - seems like it would be difficult to reach a single spot in the galaxy if there is that much ground to cover.
This is where getting better and better ships comes in. The one you start out with will probably only be powerful enough to take you up to a space station near your starting planet. There you will be able to buy a slightly better one that might allow you to explore all the planets in your solar system without too much effort. Next, after mining enough resources (or doing other things you can make money off), perhaps you'll get your first ship with a hyperdrive. Now you can hop between star systems, but those are still very small distances on the galactic scale. So you keep going. Maybe you can now get a ship that can carry large amounts of cargo over decent distances, and so you'll start making money faster by doing trade runs. Or perhaps you'll get a fighter ship and become a space pirate to make money that way instead. There are many possible "career paths". Anyway, this is the sort of progression you'll be going through, as I've understood it. You'll be able to move across larger and larger distances, and with time the galactic center will be within reach.
