I can still remember the awe that washed over me the first time I flew my ship out into the depths of space in No Man’s Sky.
It was December 2016, and I was – as I often am – a little late to the party. I’d somewhat followed the No Man’s Sky marketing, intrigued by the prospect of getting to live out my space-age fantasies, and I’d absolutely caught wind of the disastrous launch. That didn’t worry me as I headed off into the depths of space – I was borrowing my brother’s copy of the game, anyway. I figured I’d fly for a few hours until, like apparently everyone else had, I got bored and then returned the game. A few months later, I was 300 hours in, and my brother said I could just keep it.
Since then, No Man Sky has pulled a wild turnaround, winning back the people who left it disenchanted and expanding its player base dramatically. Years of free, high-quality updates have transformed the game into something even better than what was promised at launch. The game just launched a new “expedition” called Adrift that’s aimed at transporting players back in time and giving them a taste of what No Man’s Sky was like at launch. I couldn’t help but dive back into the game, and the journey that Adrift took me on reminded me how magical the game has always been.
Back to basics
Adrift resets No Man’s Sky by emptying out the galaxy. All the alien races we’ve come to know over the years have mysteriously vanished, leaving piles of ominous space goop and abandoned stations in their wake. Many of the empty planets are infested with giant sandworms that shake the ground as they move and constantly remind you that danger lurks around every planetary corner.
Those sandworms give me all the motivation I need to hurry up my ship repairs and get off-world as soon as possible. As I get to work beginning my journey, it becomes abundantly clear that Adrift isn’t a full reset to the game, and once I’m off-world, the difference between Adrift and No Man’s Sky 1.0 becomes even clearer. When the game first launched, there were alien races everywhere, but the adventure felt lonely because they gave you so little to do. Adrift recreates that loneliness by banishing the aliens, but it actually provides me with more to do than 1.0 ever did.
The milestone system that existed at launch is still present, but now you get in-game rewards, rather than just a shiny on-screen badge, by doing things like repairing your ship, exploring multiple worlds, or even walking hundreds of miles. It’s a subtle change that has a dramatic impact on how the game feels. There’s also an ongoing quest that dovetails with the Atlas path and the journey to the center of the galaxy that were the only driving forces in the original game. Collectively, the changes make Adrift play like my nostalgia-drenched memories of 1.0 instead of the way the game actually was at the time. At launch, No Man’s Sky all but forced me to create my own mental story justifying my interstellar adventure. Adrift allows, and even encourages, me to get imaginative, but it also makes me feel more like I’m actually playing a game than 1.0 ever did.
A real space adventure
By the time I’d jumped to a few different worlds and completed the first leg of the Adrift quest line, I was itching to abandon the story and wander aimlessly around the galaxy once again. More than anything, my experience with the latest No Man’s Sky expedition just reminded me why the game was able to make such a phenomenal recovery after its terrible launch.
Even when No Man’s Sky’s galaxy is nearly empty, it feels like it’s real and really alive. Flying out of a gravity well to see a multi-planet system sprawling out before you is just as awe-inspiring today as it was almost a decade ago. Planets with fully explorable oceans, caves, mountains, and plains, all populated by bizarre monstrosities, are endlessly intriguing. Running out of fuel on an intensely irradiated planet and making a mad scramble for resources is a rush. On its own, the galaxy is worth a few dozen hours of exploration. To keep players engaged for hundreds of hours, No Man’s Sky desperately needed the changes that it’s made over the years, but the basic experience that forms the core of its vision was solid from the beginning. Not every ambitious but flawed game can say the same.
