One year later and No Man’s Sky is almost a completely new game

After I took off into space and the planetary dust settled, I was left with an empty feeling in my stomach. Was my mission going to be a constant grind of refueling for the next warp, taking some snapshots of weird animals while doing it? Apparently so. Eager fans saw their odd space adventure dwindle into disappointment. No Man’s Sky exploded in all the wrong ways.

3 updates later though, and No Man’s Sky might just be a new beast to tackle if you’re willing to take the chance. The 1.30 patch released today seems to be the big push needed to push potential scavengers into a new space odyssey. So what does it contain? I’ll let the magic of copy and paste show you:

· 30 hours of branching story and deeper lore
· Procedurally generated guild missions
· Much deeper interstellar trading
· Star Systems have varying wealth, conflict and economies
· Overhauled Space combat controls, weapons and AI
· Portals stargates enable quick travel
· Terrain manipulation for more complex bases
· New farming and mining interactions bring increased depth
· Increased biome variety and Rare exotic biomes
· Analysis visor & discovery improvements
· Galaxy map and many other UI improvements
· New S Class ship designs
· Low altitude flight and the ability to crash your ship
· Crashed Freighters to salvage on planets
· Joint exploration

There is, apparently, a whole lot of stuff to do now. A story, more trading, fast travel portals and an overall better looking game. Don’t let fancy terms like “joint exploration” fool you though. It’s not multiplayer as you’d think, but it’s the first step in that direction. You might even say it’s a giant step for mankind (or Hello Games).

I wonder what it would be like to jump fresh into No Man’s Sky as a first time player now, but the bigger question is if this is enough to turn around those who got severely bummed out the first time? I’ll give it a shot.