As No Man’s Sky nears its eight anniversary, it’s clear the open-world survival crafting sim isn’t slowing down. A cavalcade of free updates continues to transform the game from what it once was at launch, and the latest of those is no different. Today, Hello Games revealed Worlds Part 1, a complete overhaul of planetary weather that’s dropping alongside a major balancing patch and a new expedition that will see the community collectively fight against the threat of alien bugs. Anyone else ready for some No Man’s Helldivers?
“When we started No Man’s Sky, we wanted people to feel like they had stepped into a science fiction book cover,” director Sean Murray wrote in an email announcing Worlds Part 1. “To bring us closer to that we’ve had to create a lot of new technology.” He said that technology will now make possible things in the game that “the community has almost given up hope on ever happening.”
Instead of a universal reset as some predicted, Hello Games is calling this a “universal refresh.” Here’s a summary of some of the major changes to how No Man’s Sky will generate planets and what players experience on them:
- New water technology for waves and reflections
- Waves are dynamic and will react to wind
- Ships can land on water
- New cloud tech for detailed skies with changing weather conditions
- Volumetrics and atmospherics on planet surfaces for rolling fog, rain, blizzards, lava sparks, and other phenomenon
- Weather systems that interact and develop in real time as players explore
- New biomes and more creatures to discover with more variety, all of which can become pets and mounts
Alongside this overhaul, No Man’s Sky will also be launching a new expedition that revolves around fighting alien bugs. Murray describes it as “Starship Troopers inspired” and says players’ fight against these bugs across the new planets they explore will be “community driven” and come with a new heavy armor mech that has a flame thrower for an arm. It sounds like the unofficial Helldivers 2 crossover no one expected, and also a great idea for a new mech stratagem in Arrowhead’s hit shooter.
Murray had been teasing this update for several days, with fans speculating about all the different things that could still be added to No Man’s Sky this many years later. Some hoped for custom space stations, others guessed a complete universal reset, and a few wondered if Hello Games might finally be ready to share more information about it’s other upcoming project, the fantasy survival RPG Light No Fire. We didn’t end up getting a new trailer for that game, but it did come up in today’s update.
“Six months ago we announced Light No Fire,” Murray wrote. “It’s this insanely ambitious game. Over the last five years making game, we’ve learnt new things, and we’re feeding that back into No Man’s Sky. It feels like we’re bringing technology back from the future!” That’s effectively another way of saying that the new planetary features players can now experience in No Man’s Sky also act as a teaser, and potentially an early preview, of what they can expect from the look and feel of Light No Fire. The game doesn’t have a release date but here’s hoping we hear more about it at one of the gaming showcases coming later this year.