No Man's Sky gets its biggest update yet
It's been seven years since Sean Murray sat down to write those few first lines of code, and two years since players were invited into the vast, but to some empty, universe of No Man's Sky.
Since then a lot has changed. The updates Foundation, Pathfinder and Atlas Rises added base building, owning freighters, survival, a creative mode, vehicles, permadeath, a 30-hour story, new biomes, and limited multiplayer. And now comes the biggest update to date, and it's called NEXT.
"One day I hope to reach a point where I feel No Man's Sky is "finished", but until then there's still so much more we want to do. More than any other update so far, NEXT has been important to our small team. It feels like a major landmark in the game's story and an appropriate point to bring it to the Xbox platform. But I know it's not the end of the journey, a journey which will be much more fun together," Sean Murray said in the press release.
NEXT will add near-unlimited base building, command of freighter armadas, a visual overhaul and full multiplayer, in addition to loads more. The combat and control system, exploration, UI, HUD, audio, planet generation, missions - everything is getting an update or overhaul.
Multiplayer
In the overhauled multiplayer experience you can join forces with friends or strangers and explore the universe together, help each other survive, build and thrive, engage in epic space battles or create race tracks and challenge each other in exocraft races.
Visual Overhaul
You can now play the game in the third person, both when you're planetside, and when you're aboard your ship.
Space visuals and planetary rings have been improved, as has terrain, textures and weather effects. Details have been added to ships, buildings and NPCs.
Unlimited Base Building
You can now build bigger and more complex bases on any planet, anywhere you like, and own several bases at the same time.
Command Freighters
Build a fleet of ships and command them from your own freighter. Send the ships out to explore, or participate in challenging multiplayer missions.
Here's a few points from a very long list of patch notes that will give you an idea of how much work has been put into update 1.5 NEXT:
Third person camera for walking, jetpacking, swimming and in-ship flight
New player models
Completely reworked animation system
New animations for players, as well as NPCs and creatures
System and animations for gestures
Character customisation
Player character turns to look at points of interest
New get in / out of vehicle effect
Real time missions
Multiplayer missions
Completely overhauled tutorial
New mission types - photography, feeding, freighter combat, archaeology, and specialised hunting missions
Hundreds of new base parts
Increased base complexity / size limits
Joint base building
Improved teleporting and selection between teleport destinations
Improved terrain editor modes and options to be more intuitive
Improved system for placing base building parts
Increased base building radius and made it expandable
Disabled base auto uploading, and added manual controls
Enabled downloading more than one external base from other players
Frigate fleets feature - including missions, upgrade system, system combat and exploration assistance
Overhauled base building inside player freighters
Reworked and added procedural textures to freighter bridge hologram planet
Reworked and rebalanced all core substances and resources
Deployable tech can now be picked up
Added refiner based crafting system
Added Craftable ammunition
Additional markers visible in analysis visor
Points of interest can be tagged from analysis visor
Latitude / longitude displayed on analysis visor
Improved HUD layout
For more details, check out full patch notes here.
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