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No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray has spent a week hyping Light No Fire fans up, with a string of earth emoji-filled tweets that made it look like he might have something to say about his upcoming planet-sized survival game. As it turns out, that's not the case, and while that might be slightly sad news for Light No Fire enthusiasts, it's pretty good news for No Man's Sky fans, who are instead staring at the frankly enormous Worlds Part 1 update. Except actually, it might be pretty good news for the Light No Fire fans as well.
Worlds Part 1 is a "complete refresh" of the No Man's Sky universe, allowing Hello Games to do the kind of thing it couldn't dream of doing when the game launched eight years ago. Every planet is getting a big fat upgrade – new weather cycles include thick fog and chaotic lightning storms, new water animations including waves driven by those weather cycles, and storms will drive the universe's new plant and animal life to flee as they stir up sandstorms or topple trees. It's such a substantial overhaul that some fans think it might be as significant as the game's landmark Next update, widely thought to have kickstarted No Man's Sky's historic redemption arc.
The changes that No Man's Sky has undergone with Worlds are pretty apparent, even at a brief glance, and players are showing off the extent of the visual changes, with planets and seas transformed almost in an instant. But given what's waiting on Hello Games' horizon, I don't think this is an update that's only been rolled out to keep banking No Man's Sky goodwill. Deep down, I suspect it's paving the way for the tech that's building Light No Fire.
Keep a flame lit
Hello Games has teased that there's "much more to come" beyond update 5.0
In fact, Sean Murray says as much himself. In his introduction to Worlds Part 1, he says that Light No Fire is an "insanely ambitious" project, and that over the "last five years making the game, we've learned new things, and we're feeding that back into No Man's Sky. It feels like we're bringing technology back from the future!"
Translation: We've been busy making a bunch of new stuff for our new game, but because that's not ready yet, we're plugging it into our old game.
Revealing the game last year, Murray said that Light No Fire was "the first real open world," and would place players on an entire boundary-free planet. As you explore uncharted terrain, you'll climb towering mountains - "real mountains [...] that are miles high, taller than Everest, that when you climb to the top of them and look out, you can see rivers and canyons and continents."
Rivers and canyons and continents are all lovely, but they need to be home to interesting stuff in order to be worth exploring in a game. That's a lesson that No Man's Sky learned slowly, but surely, but it seems that Worlds Part 1 is yet another step up. If this is - as it certainly appears to be - the baseline tech behind Light No Fire plugged into the somewhat-aged No Man's Sky framework, then it seems as though the finished article could be a massive step up - and that Hello Games' journey to its next game is well underway.
Once you've explored every nook and cranny of update 5.0, check out our favorite games like No Man's Sky.
