Hello Games’ space exploration RPG has had quite the journey since it launched back in 2016. With what many would call a troubled launch, the lifespan of No Man’s Sky was in question. Two years later, the studio is launching a free title update called Beyond, bringing a slew of new features to the game. Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray discussed the upcoming No Man’s Sky Beyond update, including the thought process behind how it came to be.
Posted by Murray via Twitter, the studio co-founder begins his thread with how Next, last year’s game-changing update, was a critical success and how it paved the way for Beyond. “Last year, we shipped Next, and the response surprised and overwhelmed us,” said Murray. “We thought we’d never do a huge update like that again, [but] we planned out a roadmap of smaller updates for the coming year.”
Last year we shipped Next, and the response surprised and overwhelmed us. We thought we'd never do a huge update like that again, we planned out a roadmap of smaller updates for the coming year ¯_(ツ)_/¯
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 7, 2019
ALSO: Death Stranding no longer a PS4 exclusive, official list suggests
According to Murray, the plan was to have a total of three updates launch within 2019. However, as the updates began to get fleshed out, the studio decided it was better to launch all the features in one big package.
“We looked at three planned updates for 2019, [but] found them growing in size and their features were so much better together,” said Murray. “We combined them into one huge update, Beyond, which launches August 14th.”
While Murray believes that Hello Games communicates best through their patch notes and “actions,” they wanted to announce the virtual reality early, as they are “super proud” of the feature. The upcoming VR feature is roughly 30 to 40% of Beyond so hopefully Hello Games is able to make it less nauseating by release.
Another 30 to 40% of the upcoming update is online features. While there isn’t much about what those online features are, Murray does say that the studio will be revealing a short video detailing this facet of Beyond “very very soon.”
VR and online features are two of three main components of the No Man’s Sky‘s Beyond update. The last component has yet to be shown publicly. However, Murray does say that this portion of the update has been shown to some press and information about it will be coming close to launch.
“It’s not a single feature, it’s a few subtler things that are hard to make a trailer for,” said Murray about that unknown third component, “but we hope it’ll please a bunch of players.”
As Murray mentioned in his Twitter thread, the No Man’s Sky‘s Beyond update is expected to launch for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on August 14, 2019.
