No Man’s Sky: The Redemption

When No Man’s Sky first dropped in August 2016, reception was, justifiably so, negative. After all, we’d been promised expansive multiplayer, thriving worlds, action-packed space battles, and much, much more, only for Hello Games to fail to deliver on every single aspect. The initial No Man’s Sky was a clunky, glitched out mess that was matched in its sparsity only by its loneliness. It’s a big universe out there, and the game did an excellent job of exploring that by making there be only about one or two alien species per planet instead of the bustling metropoli we were expecting. The game quickly became the subject of ire and scorn, and was soon turning into another cautionary tale of ‘too good to be true’.

However, starting from July of 2018, things changed. Sean Murray and his Hello Games crew didn’t take the money and run; they kept it and stayed, working hard for the two year interim to bring us No Man’s Sky Next. Next provides not only everything that was promised at launch, but tons more; graphical enhancements, new ships, new freighters, the ability to build bases anywhere and community missions to earn currency to purchase in-game items (no microtransactions). It hasn’t stopped there, with Murray and crew promising more on the way. So for the past several months, they’ve held true to their promise.

Someone turned on the 1080p

Abyss brought us a focus on underwater exploration, such as a deep-sea submersible, new aquatic wildlife, and the frightening abyssal horrors that look like a fusion between an aquaphobe’s worst nightmare, Lovecraft’s best works, and those eye-gazers from Kubo and The Two Strings. Visions expanded the nature of biomes available, brought more abnormal flora and fauna, and added collecting treasures from downed ship sites, fossilized creatures, and much more.

Explore new secrets of the sea either in your suit or the new Nautilon, create underwater bases, and battle the terrifying Abyssal Horrors

And even more is still on the way, with No Man’s Sky’s most recent update, Beyond, due in mid-2019. Beyond, from what we know, is broken down into three components; Online, which will expand on multiplayer features (could we perhaps be seeing space races or multiple freighters in a system?), and virtual reality support for Windows-compatible headsets as well as PlayStation VR (which looks absolutely gorgeous).

There aren’t that many noteworthy tales of redemption in gaming, but No Man’s Sky has definitely changed things up. Murray and co. worked hard, and now we can play hard. As of this writing, the third and final component for the update hasn’t been announced yet, but we’ll keep our eyes open and grins wide in anticipation for the info.