No Man's Sky: The NEXT Leap Forward

Le Recap

Flash back for a moment to the summer of 2016: The United States was not yet in control of an idiotic dictator, the Olympics were going on in Brazil, and I was still producing Spore the Next Level². In the midst of all these events, there was one game on everyone's minds: No Man's Sky, seemingly the most awesome space exploration game that had been and ever would be, offering quintillions of procedurally-generated worlds to explore. In the middle of August, it finally came out... only for humanity's collectively high expectations to be unfulfilled.

The general reaction to No Man's Sky when it released two years ago.

As for me, I had no interest in the game and nothing but contempt for the spam of hype it generated on the Internet, so I was somewhat glad when people didn't keep talking about it. In fact, as many of you may know, I made a joke post on this very blog that alleged the game was part of a sinister world domination conspiracy, only to realize that the game was okay upon seeing quill18 (my personal favorite Youtuber) play it. I kept thinking about getting it, but the high price ($60 USD) always turned me away since I didn't have a reliable source of income.

At release, the game was near-universally scorned for not living up to the hype of the advertising and hype it generated (which I never saw save for a Stephen Colbert segment, so I can't and don't make any judgments about said advertising), especially when it came to multiplayer and seeing other explorers in the game. Epithets like "No Man's Lie" and "No Man's Buy" became all the rage, and judging by some people's over-the-top reactions you'd think that the developers (Hello Games) murdered a hospital's worth of unborn babies. They did not, and continued developing the game, adding new features such as base building, vehicles, photo mode, better graphics and owning the colossal freighters you can find in outer space. Despite that, the game flew mostly under my radar over time and I stopped thinking about buying it completely and regarded it as a cautionary tale of hype and high expectations.

A year later (or a year ago, funny that), I rediscovered the game when Hello Games pushed out a new update, Atlas Rises, adding in (among many other things) rudimentary multiplayer where you can see people as "ghosts", reworked progression, and a subplot to the game's main story. Having heard far more positive things about it and discovering it was on sale for under $25, far more affordable than its usual price and a better reflection of its quality, I decided to finally give No Man's Sky a try. Another reason I bought it was Starbound's 1.3 update catastrophically broke several mods I was using, and No Man's Sky helped scratch the itch for space games I had. Although fun for about a month, I felt it was still rather lacking in some areas, a bit boring and repetitive, and was burdened by its failed hype campaign a year previously. Once I figured out how to fix Starbound, I went back to playing that that and left No Man's Sky behind for good... or so I thought...

Another Year, Another Update

Following a pattern of attracting my attention with new updates and then disappearing under my radar, No Man's Sky came back into my life two weeks ago with the update simply titled NEXT, an update that finally added the promised multiplayer, the ability to see your character and interact with others, and an overhaul of crafting and progression. In complete contrast to the release version, NEXT has drawn a significant influx of positive reviews, with some praising it as a "redemption story" and leading one fan to create a colossal monument of lead developer Sean Murray that's visible from space in the same way the Great Wall of China isn't.

The two features from the patch notes that finally drew me in were a rework to base building that allows you to have multiple bases across planets and systems like Starbound (previously, you could only have one base on a single planet) and planetary rings that make planets stand out and look sci-fi-y (yes, that's a thing now). I went in and found the game to be indeed much better than what I'd played a year previously, and since then I've been having tons of fun. The game feels more organic and complete in a way that's hard to describe; perhaps because interlinked systems come together and just work.

Is the game perfect? No, there are some performance issues, graphical bugs I've noticed, and I don't think it's worth the $60. However, as mentioned before, I do think it has substantially improved in many ways. I'll list some of the highlights I've found the best alongside cool photos I've taken:

• Space combat feels far easier than in Atlas Rises, where I kept getting hammered by space pirates and needed to be a pacifist. Now, flying your ship feels smoother and the pirates are much less threatening. I've actually grown to like space combat a lot to the point where I'll be a space mercenary and accept contracts to blow the suckers into the sky.
• A feature added in Atlas Rises was the ability to own multiple starships when you managed to get the millions of units (the game's currency) needed to buy off a freighter captain. Now you have access to this immediately for free, allowing you to purchase a wide range of ships. Specializing them for combat, hauling, or exploring is encouraged.

• Speaking of freighters, owning them is now as easy as answering a distress call and fighting off a pirate raid on one of them. Granted, you'll have to fight waves of enemy ships to get it for free, but as I mentioned space combat is now easier and more fun, so this wasn't a problem for me.
• Alongside freighters are support frigates, large ships you can send off to the corners of the galaxy on specialized expeditions. My freighter started with a trade vessel (upper middle of the photo to the right) that I've successfully sent off on two lucrative trade missions that progressed over an hour of real time and gave me untold thousands of units. Additionally, you can recruit more frigates of various specializations via cash like with new ships, though they can be quite pricey. It makes you feel more like a ship commander and can be a good way to earn money and/or kill time on your adventures.
• Resources have been reworked, and you'll need to refine and craft a lot more to get valuable items such as thruster fuel for take off, "chromatic metal" that has several uses, and pure ferrite for base building. Although it's harder to get what you need, the old system always felt a bit too easy, plus it makes things a bit more interesting.
• You've always been able to find free crashed ships at the price of your old one and whatever it
  
  had in it, but since Atlas Rises (I think) you need to repair their inventory slots with your hard-earned units. Now you'll need tons of resources to fix said slots and make your ship fully-armed and operational, making you feel like a car hobbyist repairing an antique automobile. I'm still in the process of repairing my Pride of Sutikh hauler ship, which still requires a lot of magnetized ferrite, chromatic metal, and tech modules to restore it to its old glory.
• The best part about the NEXT update is the reworked graphics. In the release version, everything had an ugly pea soup hue to it which I never liked and made things uninteresting. Now the game feels a lot more vibrant, colorful, and attractive, helped by the addition of full volumetric clouds and even rings to the skies of planets.
• As I mentioned earlier, there is now a fully-integrated multiplayer where you can meet others, team up with them, or even be a big jerk. I'm not a big fan of multiplayer personally, but I do like the idea of it, especially since it prompted the addition of...
• Character customization! Prior to NEXT, you lacked a character model and thus there was no ability to know who or what you were (although I always assumed the player was a human). You start off as an astronaut in an orange suit, but via a space station module you can become a burly Vy'keen warrior, a small Gek trader, a robotic Korvax, or a strange Traveler*. I stuck with the "Anomaly" astronaut look, but donned a cool helmet (complete with gold visor to protect against solar exposure) and a slick blue suit.
• *It should be noted that the game's developers are British and spell it as "Traveller". However, for this blog, I prefer to use American spellings since that's what I'm most familiar with and what my spellchecker prefers. 
• Planets still aren't as varied as they could be when it comes to flora and fauna, but nevertheless come in enough interesting combinations of colors, water levels, and KILLER DEATH SENTINELS to look different. I've come to accept that the problem of low variety is a with the concept of procedural generation in general and not No Man's Sky. It's not so bad with artificial constructs like buildings and ships, but with creatures it's an issue since scanning and naming them is a big part of progression, albeit less so in NEXT since money is not as big of a reward as it was unless you get scanner upgrades.
• As mentioned before, bases can now be built on any planet provided you have the resources to build a base computer to claim the area. In Atlas Rises, you could only build a single base in a flat predetermined area on one planet. Now, a base computer allows you to set up shop anywhere in a vast array of landscapes, such as on an island on a verdant planet like I did. I can't stress enough how appealing this is to someone as creative as myself, to the point I'm thinking about starting a game on Creative Mode just to check out cool planets and build equally cool bases on them.

In Summation

Despite being buggy, boring, not much to look at, and lacking at release, No Man's Sky has benefited from continued support over the last two years and has become an excellent (albeit still imperfect) space game that is currently one of my most-played on Steam. A special thanks must go to Hello Games for persevering and supporting the game despite the vitriolic criticisms at release, rather than simply shrugging and deciding "that's it, we made a game that sucks, let's try something else". The graphics, crafting, base building, and multiplayer are now far better than anything before in this game, and I can confidently say that NEXT is a tremendous improvement that makes the game what it should've been two years ago. (Although, have they ever heard of beta/early access?)