Sometimes a game can just sneak up on me, without my knowing it becomes a large part of my playing time – even if it is always a little too far from the front of my brain when talking about favourite things to play, or games that I come back to. For the last few years, No Man’s Sky has been that sort of a game for me. I picked it up when it first came out on PC and have played through it several times, usually when a big update came out. Unlike other games I regularly come back to, whenever I return to NMS I end up playing it far longer than I intended and it is often only stopped by me questioning the purpose of my space farming life and desire to try something new. With the new, very big, update releasing it was my thinking that a new playthrough on PC GamePass might be a quick way to clock up a few achievements to help with getting that free GamePass coupon. So, I got myself into a fresh starship and thought I would report back on the new mode – Expeditions.

Expeditions sets itself up as a streamlined, community led, game mode that sits somewhere between being a ‘battlepass’ type season of targets and an ‘arcade’ mode for the original game. Essentially the player is tasked with running through a series of goals and objectives which unlocks rewards, tech and story missions for them and some of the goals are tied into an established part of space the Hello Games team has mapped out for players to follow. This means the areas around the rendezvous points are teeming with other active players and bases when you are playing; previously only being on the nexus or a part of a dedicated community would let players see this much hustle and bustle in the game. As NMS’s biggest selling point is the sense of discovery, I’ll try to avoid spoilers for the new update outside of general points and things revealed to the player early on but also talk through my experiences with it.

It is at this point I should probably point out a rather rash decision on my part. Going into playing the Expedition mode I didn’t want to read up too much on it before I went into it, but I also felt that I needed a bit of a refresher on how NMS gets the player going in the normal mode, especially as there had been a couple of updates I’d not tried since my last playthrough. This ‘refresher’ ended up with me playing the game through to the first opportunity to warp to a new galaxy and clocking up a not insignificant play time in doing so. I wouldn’t say I was the most speedrun fuelled player, but I think I did a pretty good job not getting too side-tracked and focused on the things that would get me to the centre of the galaxy as fast as I could. It still took over 40hrs to do so, and by the end I had a considerable concern that I might have had my fill of NMS before I even got to the new mode. For anyone thinking of jumping back in, don’t do this! Expeditions more than sets you up with the various reminders of what does what and forgoes the various overlapping narrative missions that I have often felt muddy the progress of the game rather than propel it along. However, I will say that this playthrough put my brain in the right mode for wanting to have a more streamlined way to progress my explorer through their journey, it also reminded me of a couple of personal shortcuts and items to be trying to obtain to make my life that much easier in game (gotta love me an S-Class scanner upgrade for them Units).

Getting into Expeditions is much like the previous iterations, starting a new game gives the options of the three older modes, Normal, Survival and Creative but now with the added option of Expeditions too. The biggest change becomes apparent once the scrolling loading starmap fades away and the game kicks in to the (for me anyway) very familiar setup of “I’m all alone, my stuff is broken and I need to find my spaceship on this conveniently supplied and mildly harsh planet”. While the broken stuff and search part is still there, the ‘all alone’ couldn’t be further away. As I warped into existence and my PC slowly popped in all the details around me, active player dots were everywhere. So too were player bases, uncovered buildings and a bucket load of starships ready to be repaired and primed for take-off. The planet was teeming with activity. I can’t be sure if the player is allocated a ship, or much like when a crashed ship is found in the normal mode, the player can begin to repair any ship that they jump into as I hopped into the first one I came to without thinking to check. I then found myself back in the game loop of harvest, refine and repair, except this time three other astronauts did the same to their own spacecraft next to me. This completely changes the feel of that early part of the game, where previously the apparent isolation and independence is the motivator to get going, this version of the game feels like the start to the Cannonball Run (or Gumball Rally irl) everyone running to their vehicle and gabbing all that they can to get off and going as fast as they can. This feeling doesn’t change at all in those opening few hours of the game. The path to get those early bits of necessary tech, meeting the first Expeditions objectives and finding a path into the galaxy is profoundly changed when there are tens to hundreds of people doing the same thing around you. I was shocked at just how populated the solar systems in the immediate region around the start were, I know the game has continued to be popular since its release 5ish years ago, but I hadn’t expected it to still be, or even seem, this active. It was only when I was in the last quarter of the of the playthrough that I found myself in the more recognisable lonely space traveller role as I pushed to mop up some of those last few missions.

The missions themselves are a mixed bag of quests to push the player on in the game and I have conflicting feeling on whether they are more advantageous to those that have played before or those coming to the game fresh. As a player with multiple ‘completed’ saves under me I baulked at my first glance at some of the things I was expected to do – I felt the potential for a lot of grind there - but conversely, I could see that there was the possibility for a good amount of overlap where the natural process of progressing would incorporate quite a few of the required tasks. For those coming to the game new I worried that it wouldn’t be apparent that some of the questlines have multiple ways to get through them and several actions that would add to the cumulative totals that the game doesn’t explicitly explain, and this played out to a certain extent. In the years of updates NMS has had it has made it possible to get most of the key ingredients and blueprints needed via a host of play styles, some more time effective than others, and not knowing all these routes can cause the game to veer into the no-fun type of grind. Even I had a huge blind spot by not having ever really set up an underwater base before and the section of the expedition centred around gathering an underwater resource was something that very late on realised I could have obtained with only a fraction of the leg work I had put in. For all the improvements the game has added over the years the handholding it does is both too much and way too little at the same time – the objectives for progression pop up incessantly in the HUD but there is very little in the way to prompt the unknowing person to the fact that rather than doing a prolonged story collectathon you can find everything needed with a little wander around a particular environment type and visiting the odd landmark. On early playthroughs I would be the person that after a tiny bit of grind would look up a guide on farming this or min/maxing that – often finding it hard to navigate the online arguments over what does or doesn’t work – only to find out that while there will always be exploits the game rewards you highly by just getting out there and doing stuff. One specific milestone is tied to marking waypoints, which as a person who lands on a planet and then walks off scanning everything I come across, trotting from one building to the next, it was still the last-but-one that I completed. So, for the players who are much less planet based this might take some time, or worse push the player into something they don’t enjoy to just tick those boxes.

I got my final milestone in about 20 hours into the save, which was about a third of the time it takes me to meander to the centre of the galaxy looking over old saves. I think this could be done a lot faster given I faffed around underwater for much longer than I needed and completely forgot that the frigate missions are anchored around a real-world timer so had a fair amount of wasted time taken waiting on those. Conversely it could take much longer if someone ambles their way through the phases one at a time, and I guess that has always been one of the game’s strong points after the first update or so, the flexibility the player has on how they venture out once they launch into space. Once finished the game plays on as if you are in Normal mode with the bonus of the rewards and hefty amount of resources gathered from the process of completing the milestones.

This new way to deliver the content comes with a trove of quality-of-life updates too. The scanners are more user friendly, missions seem to be much better organised and linked together and there has been a rebalancing of the cost of some crafting items. It is hard to notice some of these things as the game has evolved slowly over time, but I guess that’s a compliment in itself to the developers.

Starting out with an Expedition might just be the best way to start out a new game, even if coming to it for the first time. What it isn’t though is a way to bring back on board those who didn’t love it first try, or those thinking they are getting a wholly new experience. It is still No Man’s Sky, it still has its distinct characteristics that will either draw a player in or push them away in revulsion, it is now just in its most polished, streamlined and populated suit. As there is a timed restriction for completing this and the Hello Games Update notes say future ones will run under new themes and with different lengths it does seem to line up with the battle-pass type of ‘keep people coming back’ addition to the game. With the need to start a new save potentially each time, I’m not sure I have the commitment to run these monthly, or even quarterly, but for those who NMS is their go to game (and from reading some community forums there are great deal of people for who this has been their go to for a number of years now) it’s a great way to keep a now ageing game fresh – ‘aging’, very weird to think that about a 2016 release but there you go.

As I said at the beginning, No Man’s Sky is a game I would forget, or not consider, to put on a top ten list of mine this long since its release, but I still find myself re-installing it and having a flurry of hours dedicated to it more often than games I would more frequently gush about. For me personally, the game still has a big and sudden drop off of motivation to keep going, something that games filled with busywork can be sufferers of. Sea of Thieves, Destiny 2, NMS and other live/service games will generally hook me in when there’s a new update, but once I’ve ticked a few things off the list my brain start to question what I’m doing it all for. Which, considering I will often finish one of these games to play Euro Truck or some purposeless job simulator says more about me than the games themselves perhaps. Either way, Hello Games have done a good job of continuing the “there’s never been a better time to get into…” with their game again; which they should be commended for, given how many other teams abandon or microtransaction the heck out similar life-spanned ventures. There’s not long left to get into this current Expedition but if you’ve been thinking of jumping back into the game, when the next one pops up it might be worth trying it out.