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Update, August 8, 4.42pm:
In a post on the PlayStation blog, Hello Games creative director Sean Murray divulged more about the massively multiplayer aspect coming to No Man’s Sky on August 14.
The beating heart of the social experience is the Nexus, a hub area shown in the trailer that looks like if the Death Star pivoted to become a nightclub instead of a Wunderwaffe. Players will meet up with friends and invite strangers to tour their base, beginning a new age for the sci-fi survival sim.
Beyond is a chunky content update, yet Murray revealed that ‘it’s also just another step in a longer journey, and we’ll continue to support No Man’s Sky in this way for the foreseeable future.’
Original story, August 8, 3.05pm:
No Man's Sky Beyond, the next update to the superterrestrial survival sim, received a new trailer today, showing off the multiplayer hub areas and alien mounts coming to the game next week.
The trailer opens with a spaceman trekking through a cave out into the vividly bright wilderness, populated by other players making their mark on the planet. This is the long-awaited massively multiplayer feature that will, ‘empower players everywhere in the universe to meet and play together.’
It seems that there will be social hubs for players to gather round, but Hello Games said No Man’s Sky won’t be a conventional MMO: ‘it won’t require a subscription, won’t contain microtransactions, and will be free for all existing players.’
Most excitingly, the update will introduce alien mounts, which caused me all sorts of problems trying to think of a headline that wasn’t a double entendre. I gave up in the end. One of these creatures in the trailer looks like a lopsided crab that the astronauts perch delicately upon; another looks like a hippo on a SlimFast diet.
No Man’s Sky Beyond will be available from August 14 on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 with a VR release for Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Vive. Watch the new trailer below.
