No Man's Sky: Atlas Rises overhauls the game's visuals and story, adds multiplayer

Hello Games’s notorious and controversial exploration game, No Man’s Sky, has released a massive update on the anniversary of their release date. Atlas Rises, version 1.3 of the popular PC game, brings a brand new and overhauled central storyline, portals, a new procedural mission system, trade improvements, system economies, joint exploration and more.

The new story features a new interdimensional race and the activation of ancient portals and brings a new context, quest system and branching narrative to No Man’s Sky. The update features 30 hours of new story content, doubles the lore and interactions of the existing game and reveals the truth behind the Abandoned Building logs, the World of Glass, the Sentinels, the Redemption of the Gek, and the meaning of sixteen.

A new galactic regenerated system adds wealth, economy and conflict levels to star systems, with a new overhauled Galaxy Map, improving navigation and access to key information. Players can now filter the map by lifeform, wealth and economy, and improved waypointing, and navigation allows you to see your journey so far, from beginning to end.

Atlas Rising also brings a new world with a greater variety and visual quality. Players can now explore rare new exotic planet types as they journey toward the galactic core, discover and scavenge lost cargo from gigantic crashed Freighters on planetary surfaces, use the terrain manipulator to excavate buried resources in the region, and complete Salvage missions for Guild rewards.

Joint Exploration brings basic multiplayer support to the game. Visualised by strange floating orbs, up to 16 players can see and communicate with one another, and explore the universe together. The best part is that there is proximity based voice chat support with other nearby explorers.

The update drastically changes the game and it looks amazing. If you didn’t like No Man’s Sky, be sure to give it a go again because this is the game we wanted from the beginning. You can read the full changelog here.