No Man’s Sky in 2020/21
"No Man's Sky": The "Origins" update makes the universe even more beautiful and varied
Four years later, the gigantic Origins-Update changes that and adds tens of more varied planets, creatures or plants besides the sand worms, which finally tackle the biggest problem of the universe: Its extensive, but through the procedural generation also uniform basis. Hello Games thus takes the step beyond making amends - and hints at an equally bright future for No Man's Sky.
Multiplayer, base building, a new crafting system, a story campaign, exosuits, huge freighters, vehicles, VR and, and, and. Long before Origins, the developers fed their space universe with dozens of new content via patches. This alone made No Man’s Sky a much better game.
But as much fun as I had with all these features – somehow the foundation underneath was still shaky. Imagine it like a painting: If the sketch already suffers from a wrong perspective, the landscape will look crooked later on. No matter how many detailed painted flowers, trees or houses are on top of it. But the Origins-Update now reworks exactly this basis.
I can build, craft, trade or fight in dozens of sandboxes, but nowhere else do I experience such an infinite universe to discover as vividly as here. If I suddenly encounter exotic creatures like flying giant beetles on my journey or if I can stand at a kilometer deep abyss, then this amazement, this speechless enthusiasm from the first trailers finally returns.
And Origins promises me so much more: I want to dive deep into extraterrestrial oceans right now, witness lightning strikes, volcanic eruptions or meteorite showers somewhere in space, explore mysterious alien constructions and share all these wonders with my friends. For me, the developers have not only kept their promise from back then, but even exceeded expectations.
Despite all the setbacks and resistance, the game became a long-lasting hit, which outshines many a service game – also because the developers never gave up their game. But all these patches were part of an unspoken contract between players and developers. Hello Games has made many serious mistakes that they wanted to make up for.
The massive Origins-Update is still free, continues to fix problems and adds new content. Two more patches are even planned for 2020. No Man’s Sky has changed from a patch project to a service model.
No Man’s Sky is still not a game for story fans, even though the Atlas Rises update has added a 30-hour new campaign. You can play the new story parallel to the journey to the center of the galaxy. After you receive a signal from a mysterious alien named Artemis, you follow his tracks. You will find records of other aliens and you will have to find out exactly what happened to them.
What sounds interesting at first turns out to be quite unsatisfying: You listen to cryptic instructions and then fly somewhere to search for a certain resource, crack something or activate a terminal. Thus, the story is more suitable as a guide for crafting and discovering than for story motivation.
Version 3.0 of “No Man’s Sky” is called “Origins” and Hello Games has completely revised many aspects of the game. Especially the planets, which are now even more diverse. Not only have the landscapes of the individual planets been reworked and now offer a better look, but also the alien fauna has been expanded with new species and Hello Games promises all in all “dramatic landscapes” and unique planets that can now have several stars. The cloud cover has also been reworked so that the approach to a planet should be more atmospheric and individual planets can now have swamps and marshes.
The complete user interface including menus of “No Man’s Sky” has also been modernized with this update and “Origins” is rounded off with many other improvements, such as revised teleporters, new filters for the photo mode, anomalies, atmospheric lights, volcanoes, new buildings and much more.
Nevertheless, building large bases is a lot of fun and provides the necessary motivation to explore and collect resources. Especially in the multiplayer mode: Thanks to the Next update, No Man’s Sky now has a real co-op variant, where up to four players can play together. This works perfectly with friends as well as with random searches. You can communicate via voice and text chat or use the new emotes.
Official Website: https://www.nomanssky.com/
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