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No Man’s Sky went Gold back on July 7, but much of the team at Hello Games has been hard at work cranking out a day one update to ensure players get the best launch experience possible.
“When we went gold five or six week ago, we posted on twitter, and literally every reply was like ‘hope you are going on a nice holiday!’. Some of us have, but I didn’t want to, not yet. I pictured myself somewhere staring out the window thinking about this game I’ve been working on for five years,” wrote studio boss Sean Murray.
“We’re under a pretty intense spotlight right now, and hopefully it’s easy to imagine how hard it would be to switch off from that, or how deeply we care about people’s first impression of the game.
“In fact most of us were back here the day after we went gold, working on this update. We’re already proud of what we put on a disk, but if we had time, why not continue to update it?”
The update is so vast that there’s too much to post here, but some of the highlights include:
The Three Paths: There are now new, unique “paths” you can follow throughout the game. You must start the game on a fresh save, with the patch, as early choices have significant impact on what you see later in the game, and the overall experience.
Increased Diversity: Creatures are now more diverse in terms of ecology and densities on planets. Space, night time and day skies are now 4x more varied. A wider variety of ships appear per star system, and are available to purchase.
Inventory: Ship inventories now store 5 times more resources per slot. Suit inventories now store 2.5 times more per slot. This encourages exploration and gives freedom from the beginning. We’re probably going to increase this even further in the next update, for people in the latter game phases, and will allow greater trading potential.
Graphical effects: Lighting and texture resolution have been improved. Shadow quality has doubled. Temporal AA didn’t make it in time, but is close.
Writing: The Atlas path has been rewritten by James Swallow (writer on Deus Ex) and Murray. I think it speaks to the over-arching theme of player freedom more clearly now. Early mission text has been rewritten to allow for multiple endings.
Those playing an early copy of No Man’s Sky have a dilemma as whilst your game save will “technically work post update … you will miss out on new content and experiences if you don’t delete your save before updating”.
Murray “highly recommends deleting your save if you have played before updating your game”.
Future updates will fully support game progress and won’t require game saves to be abandoned.
Game servers will be wiped for the last time today alongside the patch launch for press, with public able to download the update from launch on PS4 and PC.
Hello Games says this is the first of many game updates which players can expect for free. Next up will be “the ability to build bases and own giant space freighters. Temporal AA and my new cloud rendering tech should be coming soon too,” says Murray. “It will really change the game again, and enhance it visually.”
No Man’s Sky launches Wednesday August 10 on PS4 and Friday August 12 on PC.
Hopefully fans can relax a little about the game’s late review embargo meaning the game is dreadful.
Pre-order No Man’s Sky now from Amazon(?)
Source: No Man’s Sky
About the Author
No Man’s Sky
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
- Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Space
