No Man's Sky... A Redux?

Last year at some point, No Man's Sky did an update that utterly broke my ability to play. Every time I tried to load it, it just crashed. Regardless of playthrough, I tried new playthroughs and old ones, they all crashed. My PC, being several years old at this point, coupled with NMS's constant upgrades to graphics improvements led me to the natural conclusion that the game had finally surpassed my ancient computer and my ability to play was terminated until I upgraded key components.

Fast forward 12-16 months, and I decided to finally get around to upgrading my PC so that I can play more games at a decent graphical fidelity and I booted up No Man's Sky to give it a go. Sure enough, it worked! Time limited my ability to play right away, but eventually a new expedition was released and I decided to try getting back into it.

I went through the new expedition in good order, and though I loved the concept of Adrift, I wasn't overly a huge fan of the actual expedition, I begrudgingly finished it. I don't know what it was, I loved the loneliness of it, that was something of the original No Man's Sky that I liked the most. But a lot of the "darker" content was not for me. I am not a gamer who wants to be scared particularly, and I don't care for a lot of NMS's more combat centric scenarios, which this expedition was heavy in. I did like the more difficult setting without any players or NPCs which made it trickier to get all the goods in it and really want to play that style. (I haven't tried to create a new play through in that style to be fair, I'm not even sure if you can! I would love to play it, with maybe at the very least better Nexus access!).

Once the expedition was completed, I returned to my old playthrough to check things out and see what had changed in the year or so I had played. I found bases overrun, to be expected. My Freighter was kind of messed up, I believe due to some freighter and base building changes they made at some point, but all in all it was what it was. I started going through and looking at what resources all my farms were missing when I left the game to try to pick up where I left off, and for a short while it was a good time.

But after a bit, I noticed some major things had changed, namely the base building on the freighter. It seemed like I could no longer lay down giant farms of produce in the freighter, instead being forced into new, albeit more attractive, farm rooms that had more limited space for resources to grow. If I'm going to be honest, This change was probably a better way as it forces you into getting bases on planets where honestly we should be forced into. Previously, bases on freighters were just better. Planets the land keeps on taking over your base if you tried to reshape it in anyway, and everything you could do planet-side, you could do in your freighter which followed you around wherever you went, so why not just do it in the freighter?

So realistically, that was a good change, for the game at least. But I also couldn't place the trade station anymore on my ship? Even floors seemed different. I had a stair case to the second floor of my freighter previously and I seemed to now require a ladder instead, no more stairs (I thought I had a stair at least). And when I placed the ladder, the floor still covered it. I could use the ladder but it was difficult to find sometimes on the upper floor. I still had my old plant pods, I just couldn't put new ones or move the old ones and my designs weren't complete.

My community that I had built had gotten overrun by sentinels, lots of them. I didn't wanna deal with that and from what I've heard they still haven't really given those things much of a purpose sadly. And a number of other changes happened, that I cannot recall, but just led me to feel like I basically had to start over which was disheartening to feel. Especially because I am in a deep universe, and they have killed some of the tricks that made getting to new universes easier and I didn't want to go through the pain of going to a new one. On top of all that, with the imminent release of Light No Fire, it felt like the updates had been getting less frequent, and smaller in scope. It was starting to look, to me like No Man's Sky had turned into not much more than a testing ground for the new hotness. Looking at the screens of the new game, you can literally point to the tech that they developed in NMS. So, after waiting over a year to play the game again... after feeling disheartened by the future of the game... I quit again.

Enter Worlds - Part 1

It has been a very long time since I have been so excited for an update as this one for No Man's Sky. It has been a really long time since they have released a world based update. Those two things go hand in hand no doubt. Don't get me wrong, they have added many new features that I had been wanting for years in the meantime. I wanted better space stations (though it was disappointing that we still aren't getting more dynamic internals to the stations), check! I wanted more space ships, check! Hell I wanted creatures with hair on them! CHECK! But what do I always want above all else? VARIETY. And Worlds seems to be bringing that in spades!

This update promises more plant variety, more creature variety, denser plant-life, new weather effects, WIND!, WAVES!, New water colors!, New sky colors!, and a universe refresh to boot. Don't even need a universe wipe, just a refresh. I'm so excited. This is such an overdue update and it's just apparently the first one of, probably 2, but possibly more? That address it. Yes, it probably is another test for Light No Fire (wind, water, clouds and denseness all seem directly tied to LNF). But I don't care, I'm hyped!

One of my long term concepts has been to go through my universe, Sudzerbal, and document it and with this website and this update, I may very well go back to that. Especially now that we can rename everything after the fact as well. It feels like a whole new world. But first, I am going to see how I feel after playing through the newest Expedition. I'm going to call it a test run and see how I feel about it all, but my hopes are high