No Man's Sky - one of the greatest comeback stories in the gaming industry over the past few years - is ready to unleash its biggest update to date. Set to launch next week,
No Man's Sky: Beyond is the culmination "of 12 months of work on what was originally going to be three large separate updates."
The free update, slated to arrive on August 14, will introduce a massively expanded online component as well as VR functionality. Hello Games' Sean Murray other features as well, but hasn't gone into much detail as to what they are.
"We recently showed the third component of our update to some press, you'll be able to read about it closer to release. It's not a single feature, it's a few subtler things that are hard to make a trailer for, but we hope it'll please a bunch of players," he
said on Twitter. Murray estimates 30 to 40 percent of their work has been on VR, with another 30 to 40 percent spent with expanding the online portion of the game. The rest of the update will be smaller features that will also hopefully improve aspects of the game.
"Virtual Reality is cool and a major undertaking for a procedurally generated universe, but virtual reality becomes all the more enjoyable and immersive when you’re playing with friends, be they VR players or not," Murray said.
"Bringing the social multiplayer enhancements we wanted to make together with VR seemed not only desirable and natural but unstoppable."
Check out the trailer below for a look at what's to come, including the Nexus - a shared social space that brings people together and lets them play with friends or even strangers.
No Man's Sky: Beyond will arrive on August 14.