On July 24th I was waiting to see what happened when the No Man’s Sky universe was re-written. I had heard that the change would come at 9 am, so at 10 am I checked in. My beautiful home planet was still there! The graphics seemed more detailed, and there was more lag than usual, but that stormy golden world of Tempus Fugit continued to exist. I have to admit I was a tiny bit disappointed. How can you write an epic song cycle about THE LAST OF THE 300 WORLDS when they didn’t actually end?
On the other hand, I wasn’t quite sure “this was it”. After all, the universe rewrite was a new patch to the game, and those usually take longer to upload. I logged out of the game and started looking on the forums. There’s an active Reddit dedicated to No Man’s Sky. I found out, no, the patch had not yet been released. I was on pins and needles and kept checking back. Finally someone posted on Reddit that it was here — about 2 pm. At 3 I logged on to Steam and clicked on “No Man’s Sky”. There was in fact an update and it took about 45 minutes to download. I had promised myself that I would not get caught up playing the new version of the game (called “Next”), but I did want to see what the new world looked like. I clicked “play” and watched the loading screen, which I have seen so many times before — stars coming into view in the distance, drawing near and streaming past. The star-stream ended with white fog, which cleared to reveal….I’m no longer on Tempus Fugit. I’m on a space station. My ship has changed — it’s full of obsolete technology — and it runs on different fuel now. The star system has the same name as before, but I didn’t dare fly down to explore the planets for fear of running out of “gas”. The space station was much more extensive, with all kinds of aliens walking around instead of the usual half a dozen guys sitting around a table playing cards. In fact the new, improved space station reminded me a little of the space station in Mass Effect called The Citadel.
Meanwhile, the game went on sale and I got copies for several of my young friends. I’m hoping they will get started exploring this new universe and that later I can tag along with them. “What do we use for fuel now? How do I build a base? How do we do multiplayer?” etc. They seem to pick these things up much more quickly than I do.
In conclusion
It did happen! The universe changed. I can write The Last of the 300 Worlds, rather than My Home Planet Has Better Graphics Now.