When No Man's Sky launched in 2016, not many people thought that the game would celebrate a release anniversary, and certainly not one after being supported for five years. However, 16 free updates later,and the once-hated and now beloved indie company Hello Games will soon be releasing the latest update: Frontiers. It might seem easy to dismiss Hello Games' continued support for No Man's Sky as the studio just doing its job. However, if the recent debacle with Cyberpunk 2077 has taught the industry anything, it's that reviving a game from death is not easy work and that the team behind No Man's Sky deserves all the praise that it has received.
The announcement of Frontiers came on August 9th with a two-and-a-half-minute trailer, as seen below, highlighting different aspects of all the updates Hello Games has since released before simply ending on the logo for Frontiers. There is precious little information about Frontiers aside from what is in the trailer and Mr. Murray's PlayStation blog post in which he describes the forthcoming update as "a missing piece of the sci-fi fantasy that we’ve always wanted to add". What exactly Mr. Murray is alluding to is not entirely clear just yet, and with that, it's time to speculate!
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What's Next For No Man's Sky?
Ever since the first event for No Man's Sky, Sean Murray has been adamant about crafting a game where a single screenshot could be the cover of an old Science Fiction novel. This shows given the fact that all the trophies and achievements for No Man's Sky are named after those sorts of books, and the goal has since been reached with the addition of photo mode and the building system. Further No Man's Sky updates have expanded biome diversity, added a full-length narrative, vehicles, and mechs, and much more. As such, fans may be wondering what else could Hello Games could add to the universe with nigh-endless things to do. As the name of the update may suggest: nothing. A frontier is something beyond what is already known and explored, so it seems unlikely that Frontiers will just expand any of the pre-existing systems in place (though it may do that in addition to its main attraction).
Rather, it would be much more likely that No Man's Sky: Frontiers will do something completely out of left-field like the aforementioned Foundations update did with base-building. It is worth noting that the most recent game mode, Expeditions, shares a stylistic titling theme with Frontiers, as both invoke images of new ways to explore. Perhaps Frontiers will take Expeditions to the next level and introduce branching paths, choices, and a clear narrative with even more unique rewards to boot. This would bring No Man's Sky into more MMORPG territory, but it doesn't quite sound like that missing piece of the sci-fi fantasy that Murray alluded to earlier.
Cityscapes In No Man's Sky
One thing that many fans have been asking for since launch is settlements that are populated with NPCs, as well as large cities in the style of Blade Runner that would make the universe feel truly alive. These settlements and cities could be visited by the player who will be able to interact NPCs and complete missions for any of the aliens and factions in the city. Not only that, but it would be an unprecedented change of visual pace from the sometimes tired biomes and desolate worlds present in No Man's Sky. While these have been considerably improved over the past five years, as with everything else, the surefire way to get people excited to explore planets again is to add procedural cities and towns.
At this point, there are very few tropes that Sean Murray and Hello Games haven't covered, but one such trope that is sadly missing is the inclusion of sprawling and lived-in cities and towns. No Man's Sky has already done horror sci-fi with the Desolation and Abyss updates, it has downright mastered planetary exploration on a massive scale with the Pathfinder and Companions updates, and it has completed the novel-cover goal with the Visions and Prisms visual updates. All that remains is one final frontier for No Man's Sky to conquer: cities.
No Man's Sky is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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Source: PlayStation Blog
