No Man’s Sky has garnered a major reputation in 2016, and not at all a good one. The gaming community at large associates Hello Games’ ambitious open-world space travel game with inflated hype, broken promises, and unfinished releases. The British developer, however, hopes to make amends going forward. This will start with a major patch for the game, known as the Foundation Update.
Revealed on the No Man’s Sky blog this morning, the Foundation Update will apparently bring a significant amount of changes to the core game. Most notably, the originally promised base-building will be included here. The extent to how bases can be built, how customizeable they are – that’s all up in the air at the moment. However, this is a pretty significant upgrade, considering the feature wasn’t even present in the base game.
Hello Games also promises a variety of other fixes and additions to the base game in their official statement.
“In the nine weeks since then our small team has been hard at work on development, testing and certification for the Foundation Update,” says the developer. “It won’t be our biggest update, but it is the start of something.”
The post goes on to address the controversy surrounding its game, which is notable, as community backlash has not been addressed by developer yet. “The discussion around No Man’s Sky since release has been intense and dramatic. We have been quiet, but we are listening and focusing on improving the game that our team loves and feels so passionately about.
It’s worth noting that, despite this and the promise of being a “small step,” no actual changelog for the update has been revealed. Aside from base building, it’s unclear what other changes will be made, if many at all. We’ll have to wait and actually look at the changes upon release to see if it’s significant enough.
However, can any change be significant enough for No Man’s Sky at this point? The game has a tarnished reputation, and has become a punchline to the gaming community – not to mention the game’s fanbase eating itself alive. I’ve seen crazier things happen (the Final Fantasy XIV launch comes to mind,) but ultimately, only time will tell.
