Hello Games just took the 18 quintillion planets of No Man's Sky and, somehow, added more. With the free 3.0 Origins update, the universe has expanded, with each new planet full of fresh creatures, ecosystems, terrain, abandoned ancient colonies and more that you've never seen before.
Claiming to have doubled the available diversity in-game, Hello Games also has announced enhancements to the UI, weather variety, terrain detail, color palette, planet quality settings and atmospheric lighting, so the worlds you already know and love will appear more vibrant and dynamic than ever.
The patch notes for the release are massive, and include plenty of screenshots and explanations of all the ways that the game has been improved. We've highlighted some of the best No Man's Sky updates in the gallery below.
- Games of the Generation: No Man's Sky
- No Man's Sky update lets you make your own music
- All the updates found in No Man's Sky Beyond
Out of the many, many changes, there are some highlights that will make you want to explore just one more planet.
The number of threats you'll face on a given planet has multiplied. Active volcanoes, firestorms, tornadoes and even erratic gravity shifts can all strike at a moment's notice. Along with the cute new critters you can eat, you may run into massive sandworms that erupt from beneath you. You'll even find wild robots on planets where evolution occurred synthetically instead of organically.
The update also removed the hated "Portal Interference" mechanic that prevented you from teleporting or checking your Galactic Map after stepping through a portal. This had been one of the top-requested changes from No Man's Sky players, and will make exploring that much easier with the Origins 3.0 update.
For a look at more of the changes Hello Games made, the No Man's Sky Origins launch trailer shows off just how beautiful and diverse the game looks now.
Perfecting an already great game
No Man's Sky has undergone a renaissance since its 2016 launch. Once criticized for being a massive, empty world with nothing to do, the game has made enormous strides, even before Origins launched today.
Last year's update, Beyond, established multiplayer, VR and other content changes to make the world feel more lived in. Between Beyond and Origins, the developers inserted cross-play support between Xbox One, PC and PS4; released the Desolation update that added freaky deserted freighters with alien monsters lurking in the shadows; and even gave players an Exo Mech suit with a built-in jetpack.
With more and more content arriving per year, we're excited to see what Hello Games has in store next for its universe.
