No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has been under pressure recently. Some players have managed to acquire early copies of the game, and negative community reactions have surfaced in response to their feedback — particularly to reports that despite the ‘infinite’ procedurally generated universe, the game could still be completed in 30 hours.
On Sunday, the company outlined the details of a new day-one patch — ‘the first of many’ — which appears to drastically alter the game in numerous ways. According to their Twitter posts, they’ve been working on this patch for a month, but no doubt it’s also a response to general disappointment surrounding the game.
The patch’s updates include a new universe generation algorithm to produce greater variety and allow for galaxies that are up to 10 times larger than their current size. ‘Variety’ seems to be a key theme throughout, with new diversity in planets, creatures, terrain generation and weather hazards.
Meanwhile, ship and suit inventories have been increased by 5 and 2.5 times respectively to address what many people thought of as overly restrictive limits. It seems that combat and survival have been completely overhauled through rebalancing of upgrade items and enemy AI, whilst larger space battles with new ‘advanced techniques’ should help to satiate pilots’ desires.
Last but not least, the narrative has been beefed up with three brand new story paths which promise to have significant, unique impact upon the game experience.
You can view full notes on the patch’s features here.
In preparation for the update, No Man’s Sky servers will be wiped on Monday in preparation for the game’s full release on August 9th. This means that early players will lose their saved progress, but will create a blank slate for this new version of the game upon release.
