Sand Worms Are All the Rage at the Moment
First the Dune trailer. Now in a No Man’s Sky update: Origins.
I heard that the Origins update was coming last week, but Hello Games were still being rather tight-lipped on what exactly it would entail. I was not entirely clear on whether it would be one of the mini-updates along the lines of Living Ship or Desolation, or whether it was going to be a much more substantial update like NEXT or Beyond.
Today we got our answer. And it is very much the latter kind. A big honking, game changing update. Taking the game to version 3.0 in the process.
Alright — the ‘game changing’ part might be a tad debatable. There are no changes on the order of introducing multiplayer or VR, for example. It is more of a refinement on what has been developed over the past 4-or-so years than that. But the scope is incredibly far reaching.
As you scan through the Origins release note you’ll see that the changes just go on, and on, and on (…and on and on). Mostly with a focus on increasing the variety of planets and the landscape (and skyscape!) features within. The trailer above does little justice to how far reaching the changes are though.
The lack of variety has long been one of my chief complaints with the game. I appreciated the work began in the Visions update but it didn’t quite go far enough.
I haven’t spent enough time with Origins yet to know if this has — but I can tell you the difference is immediately noticeable, even on already existing planets. The flora and fauna diversity is off the charts relative to before. The additional detailing of the landscape was also amazing to see.
I’m unsure yet whether this will all be enough to pull me back in for another playthrough right now or not. There is a lot going on game-wise at the moment! I’m still going through a bit of a game sampling phase after my computer upgrade, marveling in the wonder of frame rates solidly over 60 even with max settings on my super ultrawide screen. I’m sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but it hasn’t yet. :)
