Still got a copy of No Man’s Sky kicking around? Throw it into your PS4 this morning and you’ll discover the free V1.1 patch, also called the Foundation Update, is now live. This is a huge patch and brings a significant amount of changes, fixes and new modes to what has been the year’s most divisive space exploration sim.
If you could have lived our lives over the last months, you’d know how meaningful this is.
Here’s update 1.1https://t.co/4TelmFIgsK
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) November 27, 2016
Among its changes, the Foundation Update brings with it three new ‘rule sets’ that allow players to craft bases, new save points, new tech and other items to help you progress. It also brings giant cargo freighters and a multitude of further little tweaks to the base game, separate from all the new toys.
The video embed above walks you through the more significant alterations, while the official No Man’s Sky website goes into greater detail on every part of the Foundation Update. To give you an idea of how far ranging this patch is, here’s a convenient list of dot points:
- Three game modes — Normal (the experience most know and seem to revile), Creative (which is designed to provide players with the tools to build all of the things, including sprawling mega-bases) and Survival (which lowers your odds of survival to very small numbers indeed).
- Home bases can now be crafted and used for everything from research to general storage. Those who complained about the inventory management will be breathing a sigh of relief.
- Freighters can be purchased and manned by a crew of alien beings for some extra, mobile storage.
- Your personal inventory has also been expanded, along with a UI tweak that makes checking your inventory much, much easier.
- Pretend you’re Matt Damon in The Martian by growing crops to harvest resources.
- Build save points anywhere you damned well please.
- Leave messages for future explorers on comms terminals (which will absolutely be abused by arseholes and children but it’s nice that it’s there).
- The PS4 version of the game is getting a photo mode so you can perfect your intergalactic Instagram portfolio. The PC version is getting a swath of bug-fixes of its own.
There’s a lot to go through here. The only time you see patch notes this dense are when CD Projekt Red have a new idea for The Witcher 3. There’s so much in the Foundation Update that even No Man’s Sky design lead Sean Murray broke his months-long social media silence to spotlight it’s release. You can see that tweet embedded at the top of this piece.
That single 20-word tweet is Murray’s first public communique since August, right after the game launched to a storm of controversy and criticism. When introducing the patch only a few days ago, Hello Games made a point of mentioning the backlash they had endured post-launch.
It’s been a rough few months for Hello Games following the rocky launch of No Man’s Sky. One of the most anticipated games in the history of the medium, No Man’s Sky was set upon by an angry player base who, after discovering the game was missing many of the features hinted at in trailers and publicity spiels, claimed they had been lied to, directing the full force of their ire at Hello Games and Sean Murray in particular. The game also fetched middling reviews from critics, ourselves included. In recent months, it has even been the subject of an investigation into whether or not the game is guilty of false advertising.
Hello Games says that the Foundation Update is the first of “many free updates” to No Man’s Sky. Hopefully its many changes will restore some faith in the product and give those who were craving something more substantial from No Man’s Sky a fraction of what it was they were looking for.
At the time of writing, the patch is not yet available on PC but will likely be arriving in the coming days.
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