Well, now we feel really old. No Man's Sky, Hello Games' massively successful sci-fi sandbox, celebrates its seventh anniversary this month. It goes without saying that the game has changed and improved immeasurably since its launch in 2016. Looking back on that journey, the developer has put together the above video — ending with a tease for what's next.
A quick run through each major update is punctuated by a teaser for Echoes, the next big thing for No Man's Sky. Unfortunately there are no details on what it brings to the galactic table, but we'll apparently learn more next week.
Sean Murray, founder of Hello Games, is reflective in his statement accompanying the video. He says he "can't describe what it felt like" when players began exploring No Man's Sky at launch. "It was already the culmination of five previous years of very hard work for our tiny team," Murray says, adding that the team size pre-launch peaked at 15.
"I've been working on this game for nearly a third of my life, and it's been more successful than we ever planned or dreamed," He says. "It hasn't always been easy, but the thing that has been our guiding star throughout has been the players and the community."
Murray says there's "still a lot we want to try, so much we are still excited for", and again points to Echoes as the next step. "Our journey continues. Thank you so much for your support."
We're excited to see what this Echoes update entails, then. Are you still enjoying the vast expanses of No Man's Sky? Launch into the comments section below.
Comments 23
Oh man, just when I got out, they're going to pull me back in, aren't they?
Have they enabled an option to skip the tutorial yet? I played it in its first year and haven’t since, simply because I really don’t want to play the initial mission.
One of the greatest comeback stories in a long time. Happy this one turned things around even though its not necessarily my jam.
@itsfoz You can't "skip" the first mission. You can disable to tutorial messages but you still start out with no materials and a busted ship, because you can't really start differently. But what you can do now is turn the difficulty settings on and off individually and/or turn the slider to "creative" mode where you just have infinite resources, no hazard suit refills, etc so you can cheese through the beginning quickly and then turn it back if you want. They added that with the version that added the individual difficulty settings and creative mode slider back with the Switch inclusion update last year.
@NEStalgia Thanks for such a detailed response - amazing to hear you can adjust settings to make it a quicker affair, great news. Thanks again!!
Had a lot of fun, platinum it on PS4 and got a free platinum on the PS5 versions.
Played the snot out of this on PSVR and wanted to restart on VR2 but was disappointed by the lack of quality. Hoping this update makes the VR2 version better!
Bought the game at launch, was disappointed and pretty much never came back.
I know it’s a lot better but I’ve watched videos and I’m not sure it’s the game for me.
The way to get me to play this is through increasing the quality in the PSVR2 mode. It’s probably the blurriest/lowest res game I’ve played on the platform
@ztpayne7 @invictus4000 When did you last try it on VR2? It went through a few phases where at launch it basically looked like Minecraft, then it got a little better, then went back to being worse, then got a little better again, then in April a minor seeming patch transformed it into actually looking proper, quietly on a Monday night.
So if you originally played in Feb/Mar/Early April and put it away because it was hideous (it was), definitely give it another try, it looks way better than it did back then. If you last tried it in the past few months though and it wasn't looking good enough, I don't imagine they'll ever get it looking better than that on a PS5.
Been there from the very start and its been a wonderful journey. Easily one of my favourite games and the community is just lovely.
Hopefully they utilize foveated rendering for a big image quality boost on PSVR2! Great game.
@KaijuKaiser it just really isn't. Starfield will be an RPG comparable to Skyrim or TW3. Lets not act like that's the kind of game NMS is
Never played it but from what I understand (gaming friend) they have done an absolutely amazing job with turning it around. Hats off them!👏🏻
@NEStalgia Whoa really? Yeah I just checked it out during VR2's launch week or early March and was like uuuuh...its the same if not worse than the VR1 version. Lol. Thanks for the info! I'll look into it tonight!
@invictus4000 Haha, yeah I thought that might be the case! It was baaaaad vr2 launch week. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, it looks pretty darned good now. I think in May or June there was another improvement for draw distance. Some biomes are cooler than others but I was living inside the game when they finally fixed it 😂
@KaijuKaiser Starfield is No Mans Sky x Destiny.
In Destiny you have superb gunplay but can’t fly the ships; in NMS the combat is kinda sucky.
Brought together and strained through Skyrim it could be something very special.
@KaijuKaiser oh wow great.....tell me, when did you play and complete Starfield ? Im excited for that game, tell us all about it
I actually only just bought and started playing this game last week, I'm loving it so far so I can't wait to see what new content they add
How do they keep on updating this game without asking any more money? Sure, success keeps on selling, but still. This feels almost overgenerous.
@Vriess shhh... don't tell them that 🤫😉
@Vriess Gamepass and always putting the game on sale when new updates drop thus generating new sales. They also have a small team and made so much money early on they were set for years, also helps they have passion and actually care about the game and its fans and less about money.
@RadioHedgeFund
That is a brilliant way of looking at Starfield ha!
@Vriess You can go check out their accounts over at Companies House. Since 2018 they've had healthy annual revenues tending to be in excess of £20m. The strategy of free-updates-promote-more-sales seems to be working very well for them. If you're interested: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06663645/filing-history
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