Despite the fact that it’s not even officially out yet, No Man’s Sky has just received a gigantic patch that makes major improvements to the base game and even adds new content for players to enjoy when the spacefaring survival sim launches tomorrow on PC and PlayStation 4.
Developer Hello Games proudly announced via Twitter back in July that their labor of love had finally gone gold, a moment that fans worldwide were no doubt eager to celebrate after having to sit through a few frustrating delays to ensure the final product lived up to the hype. You’d think that studio head Sean Murray and the rest of the team would have taken a well-deserved holiday following the good news, but the opposite couldn’t be more true, as Murray says (via VideoGamer).
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.
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?
So, what exactly has been going on behind those closed doors? As it turns out, quite a lot. You can see the major content included in the patch below, but for the full list, head through here.
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.
With just a mere few hours left to go until No Man’s Sky is officially unleashed upon the world, how are you keeping yourself occupied in an effort to pass the time?