Earlier this week, No Man’s Sky announced its latest update, which apparently refreshes the entire universe to make it more diverse and lively. As part of the update No Man’s Sky also receives some graphical improvements over the studio’s upcoming survival game Do not light a fireand the most exciting thing about it for me is the new water technology.
I’m a sucker for advanced water simulations. There’s something about a wave going “Whoosh” that makes my brain go “Brr.” While you all were studying the sheet, I was studying the wave crests in Sea of Thieves. While you have collected all Killstreaks in call of DutyI was in the swimming pool on the roof of this one building in Uncharted2. You know that. And now that No Man’s Sky intensifies its aquatic activities, I’ll soon be exploring foreign waters like it’s my damn job.
It is something special that the sea in all its mysterious vastness can now be captured through games. No Man’s Sky’s The once calm waters have come to life and their vast universe feels now even bigger and more lively. Thanks to the 5.0 update, the oceans now sway more realistically, creating waves. They reflect and react to the skidding of your ship just above the surface, as well as the weather. You can now land in the water, making it even easier to dive in and explore the depths of the ocean, which was the subject of a previous update. No Man’s Sky.
I have been fascinated by video game water since I was a child. Since the moment I first saw it in games like Smart Cooper or Grand Theft Auto 3they fascinated me. Maybe it’s because as a child I was fascinated by the beach and loved to swim, or rather, loved to ride on my grandmother’s back and pretend to swim. Maybe it seemed odd to me that games couldn’t reflect this pastime that I loved so much. Whatever the case, I loved trying to swim in games, especially when bodies of water felt like a boundary I wanted to cross.
Today, the ability to traverse water is far more commonplace in games. As a result, the impetus for water in games has shifted. Whereas they once represented a boundary that prevented you from doing something that was not technically possible, bodies of water are now vehicles for incredible technical displays. They now illustrate what Is possible.
No Man’s Sky feels real now. Watching the waves being torn by storms adds expressiveness to the whole thing. No Man’s Sky now hosts a universe worth exploring, if only to see how wave patterns change depending on the environment and time of day. The ocean is now another means of measuring how unique and great an experiment it is No Man’s Sky and folks, I think I hear his siren calls. If this is what we can expect from Do not light a firewhose goal is to simulate an entire world in every detail, I fear it might be over for me.
