No Man’s Sky, originally released in 2016, was initially met with mixed to less than favorable reviews. The procedurally generated open world and space exploration game has been building itself up since then to fully realize the intended vision of the game. As of writing this, the latest of these updates is titled Worlds (Part 1), which just dropped. The update has retextured a lot of the worlds with skies coming in a whole range of colors, water that ripples, foams, and reflects light, and changing weather systems. All in all the worlds of No Man’s Sky seem like it’s gotten quite an upgrade for the new features beyond that.
New solar ships for those keen on going green, and even the possibility of walking houses on some special planets have both been added to the game. Also added were a whole host of new creatures to dot the different worlds that players will have the chance to explore. Don’t worry, in a recent interview with Rock Paper Shotgun studio boss Sean Murray has assured players that all new creatures can be pets or mounts. Players will get the chance to ride them as they explore a new expedition, The Liquidators, which is apparently “Starship Troopers inspired” according to Murray.
Beyond added content and visual upgrades, performance as a whole has been improved. According to the full changelog:
Rendering of environmental objects such as trees, rocks, and grass has been moved to a GPU-based system, allowing for denser worlds with increased performance. Planetary flora, minerals and curiosities have improved levels of detail from further distances and a broader range of angles. Terrain generation has been rewritten to incorporate dual marching cubes voxel meshing, increasing loading speed, improving frame rate and saving memory.
Overall, No Man’s Sky’s 5.0 update seems to mainly be focused on reintroducing the updated world that the dev team has created. It’s a completely new feel to the planets that players are exploring, a feel informed by lessons the team has been learning from working on Light No Fire, a new game that was announced at the end of last year. When it comes to the new Worlds (Part 1) update, it might give players a really good reason to look up at the beauty of a sky alive with changes.