Having just written about the game, and thus being on something of a roll, it made sense to play through the new material and review it as quickly as possible. This was, admittedly, a little frustrating, but such was the promise of the swathes of changes to the game, that I was keen to get stuck in. Reading through the notes, it was clear that much had been altered, making the bulk of what I had written about game strategies worthless.
DOES EMPIRES OF THE UNDERGROWTH AUTOSAVE UPDATE
The Foundation update had taken me by surprise – I was totally unaware of its release the day before I published my review of the original game, and was both shocked and excited upon discovering it. The update has made significant changes to the algorithms that procedurally generate the planets, and, as a consequence, some have been re-generated from scratch altogether.
Such was my fate when I logged back into No Man’s Sky after its first major update – Foundation.
In its place was a lurid nightmare a reddy, yellowy mess that felt wholly uninviting. Gone was the green grass and the swishing trees, gone were the docile grazing beasts I had spent some time studying. The colour of the islands had changed as well as that of the oceans, and my worst fears were confirmed when I broke through the upper atmosphere. Upon closer approach, it was immediately clear that this was a different planet altogether. I kicked in the engine again and sped towards the surface. Perhaps if I flew down to the surface I would find things much as they been before and be free, once again, to name and claim the planet. Perhaps merely the name had changed, or the planet had reverted to its pre-discovery place-holder, which I could no longer recall. I turned back to Injamiaogul, taking a closer look.
Leura Falls had somehow changed, yet Three Sisters had been erased from existence altogether. I looked closely into the seemingly endless sphere of space that surrounded me, yet there was nothing indeed, I could not see another water world at all. Perhaps there been another planet here all along, hidden from line of sight by one of the others. Turning in a circle, I visually scanned the system to see if my would-be home was elsewhere. I pulled up abruptly, cutting the engine and bringing my ship to a barely perceptible drift. Wasn’t this Leura Falls? Was I not in the right system? I checked the galactic charts to confirm my whereabouts, and there was no mistaking it: I was unquestionably in the Faren Sav system – a system in which I had discovered every planet and landed on their surface. What then was this other planet? There had been another water-world in the system – Three Sisters – was I mistaking the two? If so, why would its name have changed? Then, taking another glance, I saw the planet’s name, and blinked: Injamiaogul. At first I paid little attention to this, so that I was already familiar with this information. As the planet lined up in my sights, the targeting computer locked on and planetary data began its read-out on the screen. One more bumpy skip through the asteroid belts and I would be home.
I pointed the nose around the apex of Fustung and punched in the pulse drive.