In the six years since No Man’s Sky was released, the ambitious space game’s title has gone from being synonymous with hubris to an example of redemption through hard work and dedication. In 2022, “creating No Man’s Sky” means rescuing a struggling game after a failed launch. The No Man’s Sky 4.0 update will be released on October 7th and creator Sean Murray tells us that while this patch isn’t much to look at, it’s packed with quality of life improvements that continue to make the gaming space better. role-playing more fun and exciting. . easier to play, whether you are a beginner or an experienced astronaut.
“They’re not big, you can’t take big screenshots with stuff like that,” says Murray. “But they are really important to the people who play.”
Updates to many versions of No Man’s Sky have accompanied the release on new platforms, and in version 4.0, that platform is the Nintendo Switch. Players who have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours playing No Man’s Sky, and Murray says that people tend to play the game for a long time, will find that version 4.0 increases the level caps for ships and weapons, offering new reasons to go to space and search for rare crafting materials.
New players will find the inventory system easier to get to grips with, as Murray says it has been redesigned to be less overwhelming. The optimization of the inventory system also fixed some of the glitches that had been bothering veteran players as well.
Hello Games has also revamped No Man’s Sky’s survival game mode.
“I’ve always thought [survival mode] it was better for the first few hours, then it got less difficult and not too different from some of the other game modes,” Murray tells us. “I think we managed to make it a lot more different.”
While No Man’s Sky is coming to Switch this week, it has already made its portable debut on the Steam Deck, where it surprised Murray and Hello Games with its popularity.
“He was consistently in the top five and top 10 games played there,” says Murray. “We play well on PC in all areas, but especially on the Steam Deck, which is very interesting.”
The development of the Switch version of No Man’s Sky has brought changes that make it more suitable for “on and off” handheld gaming, as Murray puts it, which will also benefit Steam Deck players. The 4.0 save system, for example, saves your game permanently so you don’t have to worry about going back to your ship or physical save point every time you want to end a session.
Again, not the kind of changes that often make headlines, but impressive nonetheless. As Murray points out, the 4.0 update is unique in that it was preceded by a long series of content updates since 3.0 that added great new features to the space game on a fairly regular basis. In May, the Leviathan update added space whales and a roguelike mode, followed by Endurance in July, which introduced instant warps, larger fleets, and Nexus missions. Update 4.0 revisits some of the less impressive, but certainly no less important, core systems from No Man’s Sky.
While the story of No Man’s Sky in the popular imagination is one long redemptive arc, for Murray and his team at Hello Games, it was about maintaining a constant balance between the joys and challenges of making games. He says that he reads all the reviews emailed to Hello Games and Twitter – it still goes directly to your phone and smartwatch. While there are too many to answer individually, Murray says he hopes player feedback will be reflected in updates to No Man’s Sky. The game itself is part of this ongoing conversation.
“That’s how I like to see it,” he says. “I hope that’s how I feel. Honestly, that’s what inspires confidence and what people want to see from us. People don’t want to listen to me, they want to know what’s in the game. They don’t want to know how I feel or anything, and I’m not interested in that side of things at all.”
Murray has learned a lot since preparing for the release of No Man’s Sky, and seems to have gained a comfortable understanding of the sometimes rocky relationship between the developers, the game, and its players.
“For me, the simple truth is that making games is really hard,” he says as we discuss CD Projekt Red’s struggles to “pull No Man’s Sky” with Cyberpunk 2077. “It’s a sign of the difficulty each find it difficult. If you make a movie, you release it, and that’s good or bad, right? If you make a game and you make it wrong, it’s like you’re making a movie, and then something goes wrong, people get stuck in the movies. Or no one can enter the cinema, everyone stands outside. The cinema is on fire.
Murray says that he sympathizes with players who are very passionate about the games they play because he sees himself as such a player.
“I don’t know how much other people care about games, right? But for me, it’s something I’m very emotionally invested in,” she says, a big smile on her face. “I’m sure that for others his thing is music, or books, or movies, or whatever. And I like all those things too. But the level of excitement that I get when I play GTFO or when I play Diablo or when I’m in VR… Apex Legends winning or losing is amazing like nothing else, you know?
No Man’s Sky 4.0 launches on October 7.
Source : PC Gamesn
