To the future: No Man's Sky: NEXT
A quick look at where No Man's Sky was, and where it will be on July 24th NEXT week
SPACE, It's pretty Big, and Interesting, and Stuff...
The story of No Man's Sky is a story of passion, passion for a genre that is underrepresented in gaming as a whole. Yes, there are the likes of Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen, and many more but compared to the vast swath of shooters and other genre-games, games like No Man's Sky are few and far between.
In fact, one could argue that there is really no game like No Man's Sky. Sean Murray and his team of developers, a small team I might add, that started as just 4 and blossomed to a whopping... 15 developers took the idea of a procedurally generated space simulation to the dizzy heights of E3 just over 2 years ago now.
After a rough patch where they lost their data and equipment in a flood, they delivered a game that many people found underwhelming and soon the love for No Man's Sky, and Sean, quickly turned to disappointment and in some cases worse behaviour followed.
Yet No Man's Sky was out there and some folks, myself included, found interesting things to see and do under the stars.
The next two years however, things changed, after an initial silence - Sean and Hello Games appeared to address us and assure us that they were looking at the game, that they had heard the community, the concerns and were delivering patch notes.
We had a few patches and things got better.
Then we heard of: Foundation.
Things that we weren't promised in the E3 shows were on the cards, features that the community had asked for to help make the game better and better.
Foundation became this: Foundation Update Page
It was free, and it wasn't over.
What followed were more patches, quality of life improvements and a new update codenamed: Pathfinder.
Exocraft and more...
Hello Games did not rest, they continued on and soon we heard of Waking Titan. An Alternate Reality Game played in real life, and on our computer screens. There were hints of a deeper story to the simulation, hints of something much bigger.
If you're unsure of what Waking Titan is, our friends at DM21 Gaming with Bicycle Walrus have you covered in that regard.
DM21 Gaming: Waking Titan 101 for New Players
This is the one-stop shop for knowledge about Waking Titan and how it all works.
When Season 1 of Waking Titan ended, we got the third update: Atlas Rises.
Many of us thought that might be it; we didn't know that coming this year was the biggest surprise for fans of the game. No Man's Sky was coming to Xbox, to launch on the 24th of July and not only that Season 2 of Waking Titan began and we were treated to the reveal of NEXT: A massive game-changing update to No Man's Sky.
No one could have foreseen what NEXT was like, we speculated, we talked about it, many fans tuned into Waking Titan Season 2 to begin to unravel the elements and play the ARG.
Yesterday, Element 6 was unlocked and it brought with it a teaser of what No Man's Sky: NEXT promises NEXT week.
Rather than re-iterate what has been said already by many Content Creators in the community, I'm just going to leave a link here to the No Man's Sky site and let you look it over, along with that teaser trailer for NEXT.
I feel that this is one step closer to the vision that Sean had when he first thought of No Man's Sky. It's the multiplayer that many people wanted at launch and then some, but let me leave you with this, to those people who don't trust Hello Games and think that they cannot make up for the initial launch of No Man's Sky.
No step begins with a fully-formed walk, when we are born, we crawl, we learn to stand, and we rely on those around us to help us when we need it. Our friends, parents, families, and those we can count on. Since No Man's Sky's first tentative steps, the game has walked, it's learned to run along with Sean, and NEXT week it's going to soar and take flight to the stars.
We are all human, we all make mistakes, but its sheer folly to discount what Hello Games has done. 18 Quintillion Planets, 3 huge updates, so many Quality of Life changes and bug fixes - other developers might have walked away, left No Man's Sky an unfulfilled dream - not Sean Murray and his team.
They reached for the stars with No Man's Sky, using high-level maths and equations that boggle the mind of many a gamer. They took us on a great journey with the last iteration of No Man's Sky, Atlas Rises, and now again they're back to take us on the NEXT step towards the stars.
We can't wait to play this on launch day, and there'll be an updated review of the game because so much has changed. We might even see some of you out there in the stars, help you on the way, and share with you the wonders of a mathematically created procedurally generated universe in a game that is truly like no other.
Games Xtreme will be joining DM21 Gaming, with the DM21 Armada on Xbox which you too can join today, just search it out on the Xbox Clubs and get ready for No Man's Sky: NEXT.
Ad Astra.
Wolf out
