You're simplifying their process here (and not giving them any credit). It's not a binary 1/0 parameter switch. The system is smarter than that. It's more fluid. It's more like the NaturalMotion Euphoria system: tick-by-tick it makes unique changes to each parameter to give crazy/unpredictable results. It doesn't just plug pre-set parameters into each other.
It changes the actual parameters too.
The game doesn't work like that. Nor does it just recolor a finite group of animals
1) The game adds new things and alters its algorithms as you get closer to the center, so you literally can't see everything in your first few hours or planets.
2) There's lore, factions, and other aspects to uncover, but that's beside the point. If you've played Elite Dangerous, then you may understand that there's also a drive in being a trader or pirate or explorer or whatnot. That's the purpose, besides the "reach the center" goal
3) The game mutates and alters its base skeletal structures and animals attributes, and can then blend multiple skeletons and attributes together to form new animals, and then mutate those. It doesn't randomize a set pool. It creates new pieces in that pool to create more new pieces
I think it's Edge Magazine's preview where they discuss how it works. The way they described it is like this (I'm paraphrasing but it's exactly what they described):
'Say there's a planet with some animals who are shaped like dogs. The system has generated limb length, muscle build, limb number, head number, colour, fur type, 'accessories', etc, etc. But closer to the galactic centre the animation skeletons start morphing and warping away from what the model-type is, to increasingly extreme ends.
In this example, the computer looks at the model of the 6-legged-dog, then looks at our huge database of animation skeletons, and grabs a non-matching one (because we're near the centre), for instance the animation skeleton for a bird. It takes this animation skeleton and the model of the dog-thing, and then starts
tweaking the bird animation to fit the shape of the dog, bit by bit, while simultaneously
tweaking the model of the dog-thing to match the bird-skeleton, bit by bit.
It does a gradual, procedural, moment-by-moment change to create a completely new animation skeleton - which in turn creates a really weird set of movements/motions/postures for an already-unique creature.
There are multiple layers of by-degree uniqueness being introduced, basically.