No Man’s Sky (NMS) is notorious in the gaming community. It had such an unimaginable amount of hype leading up to it. CEO of Hello Games, Sean Murray, hyped up the game as the greatest space exploration simulator of all time. And from the trailer that was shown, it was.
It looked gorgeous. The ocean and land were beautiful and dynamic; meaning, they had a lot of variety in them. In the waters, there was a crashed ship. On land, a lopsided tower was shown at the corner of the screen. A strange robot force was showcased alongside, dynamic spaceflight, interactive asteroid fields, chaotic space battles, and a desert-looking planet. Outside of the trailer, interviews with Murray revealed that plans were made to have a multiplayer that allowed you to find players while exploring the universe.
Hello Games promised a universe with each planet that was more unique than the last, and completely lied.
The trailer was a pre-rendered cinematic. Almost none of it had been developed. The small team at Hello Games was being crushed under the weight of people’s expectations. So when the game was finally released, it didn’t even have half of what the studio had promised.
The planets felt bland and lifeless. The animals on them felt awkward in the way they moved. And worst of all, players soon found that multiplayer had not been added. Two players had somehow managed to find the same location in the near-infinite universe, and they could not see each other.
Safe to say, the community was furious. For all the hype the game had gotten, it had completely failed at almost everything it promised. People mocked the game for how terrible its launch was. It was considered the biggest flop of the time. However, this was before the release of Cyberpunk 2077, which would claim the title shortly after
But then something crazy happened; they released a content update. And it was huge.
They added bases, player-owned freighters, two new game modes, a myriad of new decoration items, an entire farming system, placeable save points, and a load of graphical improvements. And they didn’t stop there.
In the next update, they added vehicles. The next, an entire story quest. Then, true multiplayer. Then an underwater overhaul.
Within the next few years, NMS managed to deliver on almost everything they promised, and then some. Compared to the aforementioned Cyberpunk 2077, it’s been able to bounce back from its failure far better, while Cyberpunk remains a glitchy and underwhelming mess.
A major introduction to improve replay-ability is Expeditions. Expeditions are limited-time events that let you earn new cosmetics. But, to unlock the rewards, you need to complete sets of objectives called “phases.” Each phase gives better things than the last, and if you complete them all, you get a summative reward. These are an excellent way to create more community engagement. And recently, they’ve begun adding community-wide objectives for other rewards.
The base-building in the game is also very well done. Bases don’t just serve as a place to relax, you can also install various technologies in them that passively harvest resources. There’s even an entire music-making system called ByteBeats that can only be used in bases.
But bases don’t have to be on a planet. With No Man’s Sky’s freighter system, you can have a massive star cruiser that can do almost everything a normal base can. With the storage units that bases can have, you can have a mobile storage system that follows you throughout your intergalactic exploits!
Even spaceships are not as black and white as one might expect. There exist 5 classes of spaceships; D, C, B, A, and S. You can upgrade your spaceship class for a large cost of Nanites (special currency for tech). On top of this, there are eight clearly defined types: fighter, hauler, shuttle, explorer, exotic, interceptor, solar, and living. Currently, you can harvest parts from salvaged fighters, haulers, explorers, and solars to build your own. It is expected that some of the ships will be able to be constructed in future updates. However, due to the unique nature of interceptors and living ships, they are not likely to join the roster.
To get an interceptor, you need to destroy an entire Sentinel fleet (a robotic space police force made by the universe’s creator, the Atlas), and then track down an interceptor using a scanner you get from their freighter. But to unlock the interceptor, you need to acquire a few items found on the planet.
However, the living ship is even more extreme.
The Space Anomaly is a multiplayer hub, full of all sorts of useful stations and characters. There’s a section dedicated to unlocking new technologies, and one NPC even gives you some spare cash each real-life day. But most important of all are the daily quests, and the Quicksilver currency system.
If you complete your daily quest, you are rewarded 400 Quicksilver to spend in a shop. Every weekend, you are given a quest that will reward you 1,800 Quicksilver. There is no other way to earn Quicksilver, which is nice since so many other games have microtransactions nowadays. While it seems like you can get a lot of Quicksilver, it costs about 125,720 Quicksilver to unlock everything in the shop. And that’s assuming you don’t buy multiple of some of the single-use items. The most expensive items can cost upwards of 3,200 Quicksilver; which is where we get to the living ships.
In the Quicksilver shop, you can buy a “void egg” for 3,200 Quicksilver that triggers a quest called “Starbirth.” Upon completion, you are granted a ship that is always an S class. The living ship is not compatible with normal technologies. Its storage size cannot be upgraded, and you can’t add metal starship technologies. What it comes with is what you get. However, it has a “growing” system with nanites where you can upgrade built-in organic technology. Safe to say, this is insanely elaborate. It makes sense that this single ship was its own update.
There is a similar complexity in NMS’s multi-tools, the gadget of choice for all travelers. They too have classes and their unique types. The most special is easily the Voltaic Staff. To even begin making one, you must complete the main quest line and a special quest line about a secret species. Then, by completing quests for them, you may buy parts for your own Voltaic Staff. There are three parts: a head, a core, and a pole. Mixing and matching different looks of these parts can result in some very unique staffs.
Even with all this, I’ve hardly scratched the surface. I haven’t talked about player customization, the in-depth lore about the impending death of the Atlas (basically a robot God who created the universe), the cooking and fishing, the Sentinels, or space stations. The game even has an in-depth photography system that lets you take customizable pictures! And that doesn’t cover even half of it.
But all of this isn’t to say that NMS is perfect. It plays a lot more like an early-access game than an actual complete release. There are loads of rendering issues, it is effectively capped at 40 frames per second on consoles, and planets can get repetitive if you explore enough.
However, judging by the last time I made a video game review article, I don’t have an issue with early-access titles. I have almost 150 hours in NMS, and I’m willing to bet I will have more in the future.
It’s hard to argue that NMS still under delivers its promise, with all of the content updates it has gotten in the past 8 years. And with how frequently we’re getting them, it doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon!
