A lot of games use procedural generation [a technique that generates game elements automatically, as opposed to designed by a person]. Are you using any of that?asked by Brian Feldman

We're using some of the tools. What we're doing is slightly different than what something like a No Man's Sky would do. We use procedural techniques to allow us to create or paint at scale. In No Man's Sky, there's rules and random [seed] numbers and it creates the planets based on that rule set. With us, we don't do that because we have a specific universe with pretty deep lore. We use the procedural tools to paint at scale: an artist would go in there and we would say "This planet is in the cold zone, so it's going to be mostly covered in snow and ice, and then maybe here's where the oceans would be, the mountain ranges would be, here's where the tundra would be." The details of what's in every inch or meter comes from the procedural rules but the very high level in terms of creation is all artist-driven. If you want to create a universe that has a history and a lore, that's why we went that way. We have a pretty big write department that's been working on it for seven-plus years now that's fleshing out the different planets, the histories, the companies, historical characters, moments in time. All those combine to make this feel tangible and real.