No Man’s Sky is perpetually growing and changing. In fact, I remarked to my fellow Half-Glasser Julian today that, as someone who played No Man’s Sky on launch day back in 2016, I don’t even recognize the game anymore. That’s not a bad thing — Hello Games keeps making this game bigger and better. It’s almost always worth returning to if you’ve been away for a few months. (If you’re interested in seeing a full history of this evolution as told by the game’s trailers, check out this article.)
Today, No Man’s Sky got yet another update, which includes the new Expedition game mode. It’s a bit hard to describe, so here it is straight from the horse’s mouth:
Introducing a whole new game mode: Expeditions. Each of these events starts from a fixed point in the universe, bringing the whole community of travellers together to embark on a shared journey.
Each expedition is structured around a series of Milestones. Complete these unique exploration goals in any order as you earn rewards, meet up with fellow travellers, and experiment with new ways of playing No Man’s Sky.
On top of this, mission rewards have been tweaked and rebalanced, and given a bigger focus on exploration (rather than have you simply chase marker points around the universe). And Hello Games is even adding weekend events, which players can kick off by visiting Polo and Nada in the Nexus.
To me, this sounds very reminiscent of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) gameplay loop — this is a huge community event that gathers people from all over the world in specified game areas and rewards them with various achievements and such. It makes me wonder, when are we going to see raid dungeons in No Man’s Sky? Okay, so that’s pushing it a bit (or is it?)
Either way, you can check out the trailer for the No Man’s Sky Expeditions update below.
