KitGuru Games: The Redemption of No Man’s Sky is INCOMPARABLE

During E3 2014 on the PlayStation showcase stage, Hello Games showed off No Man’s Sky in a presentation which has now become iconic. Once an infamous example of a game failing to live up to its initial expectations, the launch of No Man’s Sky in 2016 was just the beginning. More than a decade on from its initial reveal and over 8 years from the game’s 1.0 launch, Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky is the epitome of the redemption story.

However, in the time since its announcement, there have been plenty of other games which have launched in a similarly poor state only to then eventually claw its way back into the good graces of its players. In my opinion, such comparisons have not only given Hello Games far less credit than they deserve, but have elevated other titles which are in no way comparable to the time, effort, work and passion put in by Sean Murray and co. to make No Man’s Sky what it is today.

Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 and even Fallout 76 are much better products now than when they were first released – but to try and make a direct comparison to No Man’s Sky is nothing short of folly.

Offering just a bit more historical context, No Man’s Sky was first announced at the VGX awards in December 2013, however it gained major attention the following year during Sony’s E3 presentation – marking the first time that an indie-published game was shown off during the console maker’s conference.

This influx of eyes upon what was ostensibly a small game being developed by a dozen or so people led to a snowball’s effect of promises and features which would not come to pass upon the game’s official release on the 9th of August 2016.

The rest of No Man’s Sky’s early life has been well-documented by now, with a plethora of promised or suggested features nowhere to be seen and seemingly impossible to implement after the fact. Of course, the most well known was the notion of being able to meet other online players when travelling – something which was quickly proven to be entirely false.

So, No Man’s Sky has launched and players are pissed, with countless refunds, protests and petitions presented by players, seemingly set to put No Man’s Sky in the grave within weeks of its launch. And what did Hello Games do? Well, from the outside looking in, it seemed as though they had taken the money and ran, with little in the way of communication or a direct response to all the issues. Then, after 3 months of silence, Hello Games returned – thus begins their redemption.

In November of 2016, Hello Games rose from the dead to announce No Man’s Sky’s first big update: Foundation. As is in the name itself, the update proved to be the foundational pillars which would support Hello Game’s redemption story henceforth, with just some of the MANY added features including:

• 3 new game modes
• Base building
• Farming
• Deployable equipment
• Freighters
• New biome-specific resources and technology
• Quality of Life improvements
  • Quick menu
  • UI enhancements
  • Ship immersion improvements
  • TAA and Motion Blur

From the off, we have seen Hello Games offer some features which were never promised, while also solving a couple present complaints from the game’s launch.

While a massive update in its own right, No Man’s Sky still had a long way to go if it wanted to become the game it was promised to be. The Redemption continues

Four months later, in March of 2017, Hello Games resurfaced once more, this time bringing the Pathfinder update. As with Foundation, the list of changes and additions is far too great to list here, but some of the more notable features included:

• Visual overhaul
  • Enhanced textures
  • Crepuscular Rays from the Sun
  • HDR
  • Much more
• Online base sharing
• Starship specialisation and classes
• Multi-tool specialisation and classes
• Ship trading
• Economy / progression overhaul with Blueprints and Nanites
• Doubled the base building customisation options
• Multiple new ship and multi-tool weapons
• 4th mode (permadeath)
• Photo Mode
• Discovery menu
• Low-flight improvements
• Exocraft
  • Nomad
  • Roamer
  • Colossus
• Exocraft races

Already, we are seeing Hello Games begin to work on No Man’ Sky’s back-end, with the first instance of any type of multiplayer within the game arriving in the form of online base sharing – making the game’s universe suddenly feel that bit more connected.

But of course, Hello Games were nowhere near done as true redemption had not yet been achieved.

5 months on, during No Man’s Sky’s first anniversary, Hello Games released by far their biggest update yet – Atlas Rises, which added:

• A whole new addition campaign
  • Featuring a new race
  • Ancient Portals
  • 30 hours of new story content
  • Double the number of lore / interactions
• Overhauled Galactic relationships
  • Adding wealth, economy and conflict levels to star systems
  • Revamped galaxy map with QoL improvements and more
• Increased world variety
• New, exotic planet types
• Crashed Freighters and Salvage missions
• New Missions agent and system which lets you build relationships and standing with different species
• Interstellar Trading
  • Bringing countless new economic variables
  • Tiered crafting system
  • Combine crafted products to create increasingly valuable items
  • More depth to farming, mining and harvesting
• Visual improvements
• UI enhancements
• Ancient portals can now be activated
  • Revisit previous planets
  • Other players’ bases
  • Jump randomly to new worlds
• Overhauled space combat
  • New enemy AI
  • Dog-fighting
  • New weapons
  • Brand new HUD
• Low-orbit flights
• New class designs
• Quality of Life improvements
• New Save system
• The first instance of multiplayer with floating orbs representing other players

One year on from its initial launch and No Man’s Sky has already begun to implement arguably the most difficult feature which they had promised at the start: multiplayer.

While yes, at the moment you can’t really interact or see the players, the creation of back-end systems to allow for seamless multiplayer is no small feat, and so this in many ways marks the first point in which I could truly say that No Man’s Sky was well on its way to redemption.

Even so, I never could have imagined just how early we still were in the overall journey of No Man’s Sky — and where it was going ‘next'.

The following major update came with the game’s second anniversary: NEXT. Of course, amongst all these major updates – past and future – were patches which addressed more immediate issues while adding various QoL fixes, and so it wasn’t as though Hello Games simply disappeared for a year while working on the update.

However, even if that had been the case, the wait would have been worth it, with just some of the more notable additions including:

• Full multiplayer
• Multiplayer missions
• Complete and seamless co-op throughout the entire game
• Weekly content and community events
• Hundreds of new base building parts alongside being able to own multiple bases
• Freighter enhancements with new Frigate fleet system
• Frigates can assist in space battles
• Real-time fleet missions
• Freighter base building improvements
• All core substances and resources were reworked and rebalanced
• Planetary resources expanded, with unique substances and items to find and refine based on the planet’s biome and weather, as well as stellar classification
• Procedural tech stat enhancements for your equipment
• Overhauled opening section
• 6 new mission types
• Visual overhaul
  • More dramatic terrain generation
  • Planet surfaces look more interesting and representative from orbit
  • Colour palette variety, dense forests and large trees, and abandoned and empty systems
  • Hazardous storms look more dramatic with new biome-specific particle effects
  • Planetary rings of asteroids and improved space visuals
  • Vast oceans of visually improved bodies of water with new continental terrain shapes
  • Dynamic volumetric clouds
• Galactic Trade Terminal
• Exploration, Fauna and Flora overhaul
  • New buried discoveries
  • Enhanced fauna AI
  • Revamped fauna animations
  • Sentinel AI improvements
  • New hazardous flora and fauna
• Audio improvements/additions across the board
• 3rd-person mode
  • True low flight mode across the surface of planets
  • Gestures/emotes
  • Character customisation

Easily the game’s biggest update yet, the multiplayer implementation alone must have been a colossal task, with the team needing to create actual character models for the first time.

Of course, they went above and beyond in this regard, adding a whole 3rd person mode alongside character customisation – both features which were neither promised nor expected.

At this point, it was more than safe to say that Hello Games were committed to No Man’s Sky, with each update not only bringing a missing feature or two, but also adding whole new gameplay opportunities through a constant evolution to its core systems – making every subsequent function more dynamic, useful and fun.

Breaking down and discussing every single update would be far too lengthy, especially as we have only gone through 4 of the 28 different major and named releases.

However, over the course of the ‘next’ 6 years, Hello Games would take No Man’s Sky from the prime story of redemption to the ONLY game worth being listed as such, with just a hint of the hundreds of changes, additions and overhauls including but certainly not limited to:

• Underwater overhaul with new creatures, biomes, discoveries and more
• Underwater tech including submarines and more
• New anomalous planet biomes create a weirder, more diverse universe to explore
• New ‘bizarre’ creatures
• Multiple visual and planet generation overhauls
• Sentient Minerals
• Uncompromised VR support
• 32-player multiplayer
• Space anomaly social hub
• Reworked mechanics for increased skill/rewards
• Creature riding
• Comprehensive companion/pet system
• Hundred of recipes to create
• New logic/electricity system, vastly expanding base building capabilities
• Comprehensive music-making device
• Complete starship building/customisation
• New full campaigns
• Exo-mech
• Gunplay overhauls
• Multiple universe variety overhauls
• Over a dozen months-long community expeditions
• Cloth and fur physics
• Rideable flying companions
• Comprehensive settlement system with multiple overhauls/improvements
• Overhauled base building
• Sentinel overhaul/expansion
• New starship types
• New and comprehensive pirating role-playing systems
• Contraband goods/tech
• Freighter overhaul
• Complete difficulty customisation
• Overhauled the original story
• Discovery overhaul with records, milestones and more
• Player can now be left-handed
• Corrupted worlds with new variables across all those within
• Complete multi-tool customisation/creation
• Space station overhauls

The two most recent updates, Worlds Part 1 and Aquarius have not let up with the list of additions and improvements, with the former once again for the umpteenth time overhauling the world generation to make a game which is somehow even more visually diverse, pretty and worth exploring.

It essentially brought all of the tech created for their upcoming follow-up game ‘Light No Fire’ to No Man’s Sky; equivalent to an upgrade of the entire game’s engine.

While we wait for NMS Worlds Part 2, Hello Games’ most recent update ‘Aquarius’ dropped, adding a whole fishing mechanic to the game.

As with every other new feature, this is not half-assed, with players able to catch over 160 different types of sea creatures – all being trackable and catalogued to let you explore your personal milestones and fishing records.

Of course, as with every update, this did not arrive in isolation, as the fishing mechanic was also seamlessly integrated into the overall experience – letting you sell, trade, or cook the creatures you caught with countless different recipes.

Over a decade on from its initial reveal, No Man’s Sky both manages to remain the same game it was at launch while also bringing almost every single missing feature (and dozens of new surprise ones) into the title – implementing them intelligently and with great consideration for how it will affect the core of the game. They achieved their redemption years ago, yet continue diligently with massive update after massive update.

No other title has done what Hello Games have managed to achieve. And the best part? Every single update, patch and addition to the game was and is 100% free, with no falsified hype or build-up to each update.

In fact, you cannot pay Hello Games any extra money even if you wanted to, as despite the addition of cosmetics, new currencies and a decade’s worth of comprehensive expansions, everything is only earnable in-game – so you won’t have to pay thousands of real-world pounds to buy a new ship or anything of the sorts.

Easily the game to have been compared the most to No Man’s Sky in terms of its redemption is CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077. Just like with No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077 promised a ton ahead of the game’s launch, only to then fail to add a great deal of them.

As with No Man’s Sky, CDPR did slowly improve the gamer over time, fixing glaring issues such as the broken police AI system and more. HOWEVER, unlike No Man’s Sky, even with years worth of updates and free patches (as well as a paid expansion), Cyberpunk 2077 remains a shell of its initial promise.

Contrasting to No Man’s Sky, which managed to implement pretty much every one of its promised features eventually – while also adding countless new and unexpected features/additions – a majority of Cyberpunk’s most exciting promises have not and will never come to fruition.

Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 did improve NPC AI, letting them cower more realistically when shot at as well as being able to now open umbrellas when it’s raining, but for every feature eventually added, there exists an even more impactful promise which fell to the wayside.

Cyberpunk 2077 will never get the previously-promised 3rd-person mode. The game will never add wall running or corrupt police or dynamic trauma team responses. We won’t be getting NPCs with unique AI and daily routines; free-use of drones; comprehensive brain dances; the ability to buy and alter properties; vehicle customisation; and of course, multiplayer.

Now, some of these will likely be added in the inevitable Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, but when that does happen, players will need to cough up an additional $70 on top of what they paid for the first game + the expansion.

Don’t get me wrong, I played Cyberpunk 2077 through to completion on versions 1.0/1.1 and loved it, but to say that Cyberpunk 2077’s redemption story is in any way comparable to No Man’s Sky is an objective lie.

There has never been a video game redemption story like No Man’s Sky, and most likely there will never be another one like it. I can’t wait to see what Hello Games does with No Man’s Sky’s 2nd World Update – and how it will once again overhaul the whole game.

KitGuru says: What do you think of No Man’s Sky’s redemption? Is there any game which can come close to it? Do you believe that Cyberpunk 2077 ‘s Redemption is comparable in your eyes? Let us know down below.

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