PSBlog Feed: No Man’s Sky Voyagers update: Large, customizable, multi-crew starships arrive today

[Commander Fury]

I can’t believe it’s been just over nine years since No Man’s Sky first launched. No Man’s Sky Voyagers releases today, and it’s one of our most ambitious updates.

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I’ve always loved Spaceships. Name a sci-fi film, book or game, and I want to talk to you about the spaceships in it. We know No Man’s Sky players feel the same – they spend countless hours scouring the universe for their perfect ship. But what if you could design your own ship? If you could get out of your pilot’s seat mid-flight and walk around? If you could invite your friends on board as crew?

Perhaps the most important character in No Man’s Sky is your spaceship. It’s your safe haven on hazardous planets, your companion exploring the stars. Your ship is your way of experiencing the universe, and when we change that, it really changes how the game feels.

We call them Corvettes, huge ships with hulls, wings, landing gear, cockpits, engine parts, thrusters and more – arranged to your own unique sci-fi design.

These ships have real interiors, med-bays, sleeping quarters, war rooms, radars, teleporters. It comes with you everywhere, which totally changes how you play. Decorating it with your friends gives you a space that you share together. Whether it’s a brightly coloured tiny explorer, or a colossal dark metallic war ship, it allows you to show off your own personality.

Once you’ve built your ship and fine-tuned the outside look and feel, these larger ships can have multiple interlocking rooms across several storeys which demand the same care and attention. Make sure you leave enough room for a few windows. Enjoy those special moments, watching as the universe flies by outside at warp speed.

When you’ve fine-tuned your Corvette just how you want it, these ships are big enough to invite friends aboard to help crew for you as you cruise around the star systems.  

Having multiple Corvettes flying over a plant together is incredible, especially when you pop the hatch to your ship and spacewalk or skydive from one ship to the other.

By design, Corvettes are encountered a little way into the game and veteran players will be able to unlock them reasonably swiftly. But we wanted to give all players a taste of what they can expect, so the accompanying “Corvette” expedition is specifically designed to get you to the workshop as quickly as possible and to take you on a journey which unlocks some of the parts you’re going to need to build your first creation.

The team at Hello have been working on Voyagers for a long time. The technical challenges they have had to overcome to make any of this possible have been immense. Almost every part of the game has had to be reworked to accommodate these relative spaces. Having your multiplayer crew walking around, calmly editing your ship, as it travels at warp speeds towards a planet that is being generated as you approach. It’s pretty insane what’s going on behind the scenes to make that work.

Much of the technology we’re introducing with Voyagers is shared with our next game, Light No Fire, which is a truly open world, a shared Earth-sized planet, with real oceans to traverse, needing large boats and crews. We love that we get to share this technology with players early.

What excites me most about the Voyagers update though, is that this opens up a whole new path of gameplay that we can take in so many different directions. 

I can’t believe that in the past 12 months we released Worlds Part I, Worlds Part II, and Voyagers – all huge changes to this game we care about so much.

Our journey continues.

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