People seem eager to forget Chris Roberts pitched this exact game before, as Freelancer, and that was released years too late, with none of the promised "living universe" features, after being bought out and handed off to someone else.

Fool me once...

I've heard people say "the technology didn't exist back then!", which is true. But the technology doesn't exist today either. Games have gotten a lot better at drawing convincing pictures, but in terms of simulating worlds and generating content, we've mostly stood still.

No Man's Sky already showed that, with its demo scene derived trickery. You can't entertain people with random seeds for very long. You need intent, storytelling and reactive, interacting systems.