How much content was washed away from Hello Games' data servers by that big flood back then? I originally thought letting players pilot mechs and fly around smashing things was already outrageous enough.
What, can players now build rings around the sun?
Some might say this "Halo" is still too small and not grand enough... How about an entire cyberpunk city floating in an asteroid belt, plastered with Arasaka logos, looking like it jumped straight out of Cyberpunk 2077? Isn't that exciting?
Image source: Bilibili @Chang_He_Mu_Yuan
If that's not enough, how about a fantasy-style interstellar space station nearly half the size of a planet, covered in Gothic spires? Isn't that grand enough?
Image source: Bilibili @Yusse D'Artagnan
So far, with the player-customizable frigates introduced in No Man's Sky's last major update, I've only built a few Warhammer 40K Thunderbirds and Valkyries. I haven't managed to pull off the fancy tricks seen from master builders domestically and internationally, such as constructing massive ships like Star Destroyers, Idris-class cruisers, or Glory Queens.
Why did Hello Games suddenly throw out deep-space exploration, wreck recovery, space station construction, and player alliances all at once? Is there some big celebration happening?
Oh, so it's the 10th anniversary of No Man's Sky.
Wait, it's been ten years and Sean is still giving us free updates?
My little Thunderbird
To be honest, No Man's Sky has indeed focused on "planets" and "ground" for too long. Since 2017, Hello Games and Sean have been putting effort into sandbox and building gameplay. For example, the "Foundation," "Worlds," and "Origins" updates completely revamped base building, planets, and weather, while the "Pathfinder," "Sentinel," and "Beyond" updates overhauled vehicles, freighters, and combat.
Even pirate gameplay—I mean pirate space stations, pirate flagships, and interstellar heists—was served up in the "Outlaws" update.
Why hasn't my serious "space" been expanded?
Fortunately, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary, Hello Games finally responded to the player community's long-standing expectations.
First, there's the comprehensive optimization of graphics rendering and space scene ecology. The new versionRefactors the generation logic for nebulae, stars, and asteroid belts. The previously homogeneous nebula effects have been replaced with a diverse dynamic nebula system, featuring大量 spawns of new landscapes like purple-exclusive galaxies, gradient neon nebulae, and deep-space dark matter nebulae.
All planets, moons, and asteroids now have independent orbital paths. Even the point everyone used to complain about—"it's the future era and we can still only visually pulse fly"—has become history—yes, Sean finally gave players the planetary system map.
And this star map system basically kicks the old "free pulse drive then refresh random events" system to the curb. Most random events that previously required luck are now directly marked on the star map.
For example, after arriving at any planet and opening the star map, players can mark special asteroid belts and then pulse drive directly to explore them. Among these, in addition to new large rocky asteroids and mineral asteroids, "large" asteroids that allow free construction are also a major highlight of this 10th-anniversary update.
Besides that, the biggest change in this 10th-anniversary version is the stars—yes, after ten years, the sun is finally no longer just a texture, but a high-temperature gravitational exclusion zone that players can pilot their ships into.
Heck, Hello Games even prepared a special Easter egg for those brave souls attempting to mimic Icarus: players can fly straight into the sun, experiencing an immersive "suicide" process with rising temperatures and changing light effects, ultimately unlocking the stellar exploration record and triggering exclusive story prompts.
And if you really like the sun, you can even build your own deep-space base right next to it.
And this brings us to another heavyweight feature of this "Cosmos" update—deep-space salvage and space station construction.
The new version's galaxy will randomly spawn giant space wreckage, divided into two main types: mechanical wreckage and biological wreckage. Players can mark them directly from the star map and then fly to explore.
Mechanical wreckage mostly consists of abandoned mega-space stations and damaged interstellar freighters. Their hull structures are broken and complex, containing large amounts of rare alloys, technology modules, and advanced space station blueprints inside—if you want to highly customize your own space station, this part is unavoidable.
Biological wreckage consists of abandoned ships eroded by alien parasitic organisms, covered in living flesh tissue and writhing tentacles, with a bizarre and horrifying visual style. They drop special alien life cores and some bio-active materials. Some recovered cores can be exchanged for large amounts of Nanite Clusters. Although the dismantling process takes quite some time, the income is fairly substantial.
Of course, to participate in the new salvage gameplay, you first need your own frigate, and then you must equip it with the new salvage attraction module.
Also, your multi-tool needs a gravity beam module, and your exosuit's movement and hazard protection modules should have some high-level upgrades—otherwise, the zero-gravity, ultra-low-temperature environment of deep space will make salvage operations very painful.
But behind all these tedious preparations lies No Man's Sky's brand-new physical entity system.
Yes, most of the rare resources you harvest from giant space wreckage are physical entities with their own health bars. Careless swinging or collisions will damage the materials. Even the space station cores you find in the wreckage have a self-destruct countdown and must be returned to your space station immediately.
Otherwise, you'd know what a magnificent sight fireworks look like in space.
Of course, you might say: with so many new features and old updates—if I took a break for many years or am playing No Man's Sky for the first time, how do I get familiar with all the different systems? How long will I have to grind to get my own cool frigate, my own magnificent megastructure space station, and a sleek multi-tool?
Why not check out the Expeditions?
This Expedition 23, also known as the "Journey Rekindled" expedition for the 10th anniversary, is arguably the most nostalgic content update yet. Every milestone in this expedition corresponds one-to-one with the over 40 major updates No Man's Sky has received since its launch.
It can be said that every major step Hello Games and Sean took over the past ten years has been fully proceduralized and questified, turned into individual expedition stages to help newcomers and "returning veterans" get back into the game.
Moreover, the new version adds an Interstellar Alliance system, completely restructuring the game's multiplayer social and community gameplay, upgrading scattered online interactions into large-scale interstellar "criminal" faction rankings—meaning Hello Games will rank players based on alliance size, resource reserves, exploration progress, and construction levels.
Does saying this is a victory for the grinders resonate with you?
In 2013, Hello Games' office in Guildford, UK, was hit by heavy rain and flooding, submerging the entire office. According to Hello Games' later "explanation" after the game's release, all PCs and development kits in the studio were waterlogged, causing extensive damage to project materials and development assets, and completely destroying the early engineering files of No Man's Sky then in production.
Just a few weeks later, in January 2014, another flood struck the same location, causing significant setbacks to the development progress of No Man's Sky. The Hello Games studio was forced to temporarily relocate, and most of the project's developers began working from home.
Some say this is the root cause of No Man's Sky's disastrous launch. Back then, the community kept arguing about whether the "flood" was real. Later, as development progressed and reputational pressure eased, discussions shifted to whether the "flood" was the key reason for the terrible state of the launch version.
Now, none of this really matters anymore.
I actually sincerely hope the flood was real.
Because, after nearly ten years, Sean still hasn't moved on from that afternoon on August 13, 2016.