Wat previews van de NEXT update.
The first, most striking aspect of NEXT is, unsurprisingly, its visual overhaul - and, as the recent trailer will attest, it's genuinely remarkable just how different No Man's Sky looks. Its massively improved lighting, better atmospheric effects, and increased draw distances, alongside a gorgeous new cloud rendering systems, improved textures, better water, an optional new third-person camera, and more, combine to create a much more subtle aesthetic.
Perhaps more than anything though, it's the newfound sense of scale that impresses, with the game now sporting a more "earth-like" planetary generation system. Mountains tower above undulating valleys, populated by looming trees, larger architectural "props", and notably improved fauna. Creatures feature more nuanced animations, improved AI, and a broader range of sounds, all of which help sell the illusion of life just that little bit harder.
Additionally, your freighter is where you'll encounter the new frigate system. This wasn't a feature I saw myself during my playtime, but is described as something like Monster Hunter's Palico system. You can buy frigates - up to 50 in a fleet, which will be visible around your freighter - and each can have its own specialisations. Frigates are sent on procedurally generated missions which play out in real-time, and can be followed across the galaxy or simply left to complete their mission, reaping the rewards of a successful adventure.
With three massive updates under its belt, the team is keen to adopt a schedule of smaller, regular updates, to ensure a consistent run of new experiences. To that end, it's implementing something akin to a live events programme, in which players can work to achieve certain community goals in order to earn a second currency that can be spent in a new in-game rewards shop. This currency - and Hello is keen to stress that this is all free, and that there will be no micro-transactions - can be used to purchase the likes of emotes, customisation parts, and eventually unique ships and vehicles.
It certainly seems that the studio efforts over the last year have brought significantly more scope, scale, and depth to No Man's Sky's galaxy - and I can't wait to see and share more.
You can pursue the No Man’s Sky story path together or just explore or muck about, racing exocraft, creating scenic trails, taking on missions as a group, or building extravagant structures.
The ability to experience the world alongside other people is turned on by default. Players can switch it off if they want to be truly alone, but the way Murray explains it, having it enabled won’t suddenly lead to those strange agglomerations of player characters you see in MMO questing hotspots.
Until now you could only set up home by finding an abandoned habitable base on a planet, so you weren’t able to just set yourself up near an attractive cave system or a glut of useful resources. You could also only build your base out a certain distance from that point. Next will remove both of those restrictions, letting you build anywhere and letting you sprawl all over the place.
As with the previous mega updates, Next feels too big to be able to summarise everything here, and a lot of the changes which will make a lot of difference to players will be under the quality of life heading rather than the eye-catching trailer stuff which gets prioritised in top-level explanations. For example, I’m excited about being able to build a base underwater, but ecstatic about being able to drag and drop resources from one inventory slot to another.
Laatst bewerkt: 20 jul 2018
Yellow 13 vindt dit leuk.
