No Man’s Sky, the open-world space discovery game, has become known for great community support and reinvention. In an announcement on Wednesday, it looks like that will continue with Update 5.0 — officially called Worlds Part 1. This is because, as Hello Game founder Sean Murray says, “there’s much more to come.”
As with other No Man’s Sky updates, the team is adding more planets, biomes, plants, and creatures. However, this is looking to be a huge technology upgrade that makes the game look more “realistic” and dynamic. It also adds a bug-hunting mode that is “Starship Troopers-inspired,” according to Murray, which seems … familiar.
Murray briefly discussed some of the new technology being used for the update in a deep dive video, although you can read more specifics on the official blog. To summarize, the game will feature new tools that can create more realistic-looking water, with waves and reflections; shadows that will actually change in relation to the sun; and a new wind simulation system that creates patterns and can react to the weather.
The founder also took the time to talk about clouds, which are getting a big upgrade in terms of coverage, performance, visual detail, and variety, with different types of clouds reacting to the weather. “Sometimes a storm hits and the waves rise, and the storms gather. You’ve got the atmospherics, the wind — all this technology comes together all at once, and there’s nothing like it,” he said in the deep dive.
The devs have added even more obstacles to worlds, too. One type detailed on the blog is the floating island, which hovers above planets and is reachable via jetpack.
Hello Games has been consistently refreshing No Man’s Sky in different-sized updates since its release in 2016, which has helped the game to maintain its player base. While 4.0 mostly contained quality-of-life improvements and new difficulty settings, 3.0 brought new system types, new planets, and refreshed the user interface.
As for its next project, Light no Fire, Murray was cagey, but mentioned that it uses a lot of the same technology as Worlds Part 1. “It’s this crazy ambitious game, and we’ve been working on it for years. And we’ve learned so many things, and it feels like we’re almost bringing this technology back from the future.”
