No Man's Sky gets its biggest update yet

It's been seven years since Sean Murray sat down to write those few first lines of code, and two years since players were invited into the vast, but to some empty, universe of No Man's Sky.

Since then a lot has changed. The updates Foundation, Pathfinder and Atlas Rises added base building, owning freighters, survival, a creative mode, vehicles, permadeath, a 30-hour story, new biomes, and limited multiplayer. And now comes the biggest update to date, and it's called NEXT.

"One day I hope to reach a point where I feel No Man's Sky is "finished", but until then there's still so much more we want to do. More than any other update so far, NEXT has been important to our small team. It feels like a major landmark in the game's story and an appropriate point to bring it to the Xbox platform. But I know it's not the end of the journey, a journey which will be much more fun together," Sean Murray said in the press release.

NEXT will add near-unlimited base building, command of freighter armadas, a visual overhaul and full multiplayer, in addition to loads more. The combat and control system, exploration, UI, HUD, audio, planet generation, missions - everything is getting an update or overhaul.

Multiplayer

In the overhauled multiplayer experience you can join forces with friends or strangers and explore the universe together, help each other survive, build and thrive, engage in epic space battles or create race tracks and challenge each other in exocraft races.

Visual Overhaul

You can now play the game in the third person, both when you're planetside, and when you're aboard your ship.

Space visuals and planetary rings have been improved, as has terrain, textures and weather effects. Details have been added to ships, buildings and NPCs.

Unlimited Base Building

You can now build bigger and more complex bases on any planet, anywhere you like, and own several bases at the same time.

Command Freighters
Build a fleet of ships and command them from your own freighter. Send the ships out to explore, or participate in challenging multiplayer missions.

Here's a few points from a very long list of patch notes that will give you an idea of how much work has been put into update 1.5 NEXT:

• Third person camera for walking, jetpacking, swimming and in-ship flight


• New player models


• Completely reworked animation system


• New animations for players, as well as NPCs and creatures


• System and animations for gestures


• Character customisation


• Player character turns to look at points of interest


• New get in / out of vehicle effect


• Real time missions


• Multiplayer missions


• Completely overhauled tutorial


• New mission types - photography, feeding, freighter combat, archaeology, and specialised hunting missions


• Hundreds of new base parts


• Increased base complexity / size limits


• Joint base building


• Improved teleporting and selection between teleport destinations


• Improved terrain editor modes and options to be more intuitive


• Improved system for placing base building parts


• Increased base building radius and made it expandable


• Disabled base auto uploading, and added manual controls


• Enabled downloading more than one external base from other players


• Frigate fleets feature - including missions, upgrade system, system combat and exploration assistance


• Overhauled base building inside player freighters


• Reworked and added procedural textures to freighter bridge hologram planet


• Reworked and rebalanced all core substances and resources


• Deployable tech can now be picked up


• Added refiner based crafting system


• Added Craftable ammunition


• Additional markers visible in analysis visor


• Points of interest can be tagged from analysis visor


• Latitude / longitude displayed on analysis visor


• Improved HUD layout

For more details, check out full patch notes here.