No Man's Sky: Origins, the expansion concludes a cycle that lasted four years

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Mountains and canyons Every promise is a debt Next galaxy: the Next Gen! How much has No Man's Sky grown in these four years? A lot, really a lot, incredibly a lot. In the beginning there was the Foundation Update, released three months after the game's debut and designed to start giving a square to the project. Then, after another three months, the Pathfinder Update arrived, where the construction work continued that gave way to introduce the first land vehicles. Subsequently it was the turn of the Atlas Rises Update, whose most important novelty is represented by a first real storyline to follow from start to finish, moreover very fascinating. After a year it was time for the so-called Next Update, with the possibility of building a base, of playing in the third person and above all with the implementation of multiplayer. The next expansion, called the Abyss, reinvented underwater exploration, while also adding an interesting new storyline. Then came Visions, a first big graphic leap and new activities to do. With Beyond, multiplayer became serious stuff and No Man's Sky officially landed in virtual reality. Immediately after, here is the Synthesis Update, a way to clean and refine the game structure beyond belief again. Smaller but no less interesting were Living Ship, Exo Mech and Desolation, the three contents released in 2020 that anticipated and paved the way for what is not a simple quality expansion, but an arrival point of a journey. lasted four years: we speak of course of No Man's Sky Origins.

Mountains and canyons

The expansion released in these hours is one that we will not forget. This is not the last, as Sean Murray himself has revealed that there are still many ideas to be developed, but it will certainly be the last of a certain type, designed for a certain hardware, and that can only mean one. what: with the next gen at the door, from now on Hello Games will be able to fly much higher than it has been able to afford to date. For a game like No Man's Sky you need the rest of good video cards but above all excellent CPUs, something that Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have never had: it is not surprising that, net of the optimizations planned in the coming days, this Origins struggles and not a little on these consoles, as well as on their enhanced versions Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro.

The graphic leap is not huge but very consistent, and if you don't see it immediately in detail it is because No Man's Sky is like a symphonic work and each of its features works in synchrony to provide the most exciting glance. Origins further improves textures, adds increasingly complex cloud layers, works the terrain so that it can show off many more variables; if the new flora, the new creatures and the new colors are inevitably destined to repeat themselves, having such a wide variety of terrain is what gives the already seen a soul of its own, capable of making a difference in the long run. And in fact, the first thing that leaps to the expert eye playing this expansion is not the most obvious novelty, the flower and the tree, but the unexpected that rises beyond: they are the mountains that after years return to soar steep and wild until you feel insignificant, the canyons that cut your breath with their depth, giving new strength and nobility even to the usual flat and desolate plains. With Origins, the planets of No Man's Sky have never looked so good.

Every promise is a debt

The rest of the news are no less interesting. Take for example the new storms: lightning is wonderful to enrich the scenery, but it also represents a new danger, and the same is true for the volcanoes that erupt can ignite the surrounding environment taking travelers by surprise. With No Man's Sky Origins, real tornadoes are introduced, able to provide a new authority to the elements, new opportunities to take unforgettable photos and also proposing new challenges, since they can lift us off the ground and make us fall back tens of meters away.

The Origins expansion is especially for those who love exploration. There are so many new features that you will come across along the way, among these we found the ancient libraries particularly fascinating: imposing buildings to be explored, in search of documents that will further enrich the already magnetic lore of No Man's Sky. Among the myriad of innovations introduced, on which we gloss over letting you discover the rest through the official release log or even better by playing in first person, we cannot fail to mention the arrival of the space worms, those like Dune or Tremors that were shown in the very first trailer game, and then eliminated in the final version of No Man's Sky for gameplay reasons. It is precisely their presence that marks the end of this long path of growth and improvement that has led the Hello Games game not only to respect every promise made, but going well beyond all expectations. And these large annelids that pop out and disappear into the ground with a crash are not the only surprises of this entity.

Next galaxy: the Next Gen!

What remains to be done? With the nextgen at the gates, Hello Games can aim even higher, add what today would have killed the performance of less performing hardware. To make No Man's Sky an experience at the limit of perfection, however, we need what we asked for a year ago: a total revamp of the combat system and an AI that can put the player to the test. Among the innovations introduced in recent years, we also find NPCs who can move freely between the bases and the playing field, the next step could really be to equip them with weapons and an intelligence that allows them to attack and escape, fight and fall back.

Same goes for what concerns the fighting in space, today more refined than ever and yet always too easy. In short, an operation similar to that of Origins is needed, but focused on the actual action, in order to make the experience a little less dreamlike, but much more exciting and epic. Something has already moved through the weekly quests. Among these, there was one in particular in which we found ourselves involved that we found truly unforgettable: here dozens of players helped each other against all kinds of sentinels, and hiding in a building to catch their breath together with two or three other players, while the battle raged outside, was absolutely revealing. Exaggerating a bit, we could almost say that perfected this aspect, Hello Games could really switch to a No Man's Sky 2 with a new engine and new goals to pursue.

In any case, however it goes, No Man's Sky is without a doubt one of the most interesting and original experiences of these years, and Sean Murray and Hello Games deserve all our compliments.