New No Man’s Sky update adds walkable gas giants among “trillions” of new planets, just in case you were running out

I cherish my fairly sharp memories of the 2016 launch version of No Man’s Sky, inasmuch as the contrast renders the latest additions to the wistful space game all the more dazzling. Dazzling and exhausting. What was once a relatively (and to some extent unintentionally) lean procgen exploration sim has swelled into a game of mechs, fishing, fickle weather systems, intricate asteroid engagements, starbases, nautiloids and capes. It is far bigger than it reasonably needs to be, and it’s only getting more and more, er, infinite.

In No Man’s Sky‘s Worlds Part 2 update, there is talk of adding “billions of new solar systems and trillions of new planets” to a game that already harbours more worlds than any mortal player community could ever explore, including new, somehow walkable gas giants that are “ten times bigger than our biggest planet”. Also oceans so deep you can’t see the sun. Please excuse me, I think my thalassophobia and agoraphobia have fused into a single sprawling fear of literally everything, “literally everything” being the title of a hypothetical No Man’s Sky’s update in, oh, let’s say 24 months’ time. Find a video below with commentary from Hello Games managing director Sean Murray.

Let me attempt to zoom from the terror of the macrocosm to the pleasantries of individual exploration and survival. The gas giants look a bit spesh, don’t they? Going by the trailer, you’ll be walking on their hard rocky cores or perhaps, hopping around on fragments of solid matter launched into their upper atmospheres. I assume they’ve wrangled with the problem that the gravity ought to render you two-dimensional. It predictably reminds me of Giant’s Deep in Outer Wilds, which always used to make my knees dance a nervous jig whenever I’d fly through the clouds. The official patch notes may reveal more – they weren’t live at the time this was written.

As for the deeper oceans, this is definitely making inroads on Subnautica‘s turf, though existing No Man’s Sky oceans are pretty voluminous and atmospheric already. I am always glad to swim amongst dangling sacks of kelp. Please do not eat me, semi-randomised abyssal critters.

The video makes fleeting mention of Light No Fire, Hello Games’s forthcoming fantasy roamabout, which takes place on one, Earth-sized planet. I continue to like that game’s puckish Carrollian stylings, and letting the designers and artists focus on a single, albeit vast landscape could have interesting ramifications, but the more they flesh out No Man’s Sky, the harder it is to see what Light No Fire really brings to the party. Hopefully we’ll get a proper demo soon.