No Man’s Sky

But after getting our hands on the upcoming version of the game and talking to creator Sean Murray, we spotted lots of little details - both part of those headline changes and beyond - that had been added, all of which add up to make NEXT an even bigger step for the game than we first thought. Here’s everything we noticed:

Full multiplayer is finally coming to No Man’s Sky, and the first thing you’ll notice is that the once-lonely galaxy is a lot sillier when playing with friends. Who would have thought walling someone into a cave with a terrain manipulator and laughing at their misfortune was the tweak this game needed?

Parties can be up to four players large, with everyone bringing their items and ships along for the ride.

There’s no range limit on your party. While you’ll appear in the same place as the player you join, you can then blast off into space and head halfway across the galaxy, while remaining in the same game.

While a party’s set up by joining a single player’s game, they aren’t a host. Everyone has equal privileges, and can get the party to take part in their missions, wherever they are in the story.

The one restriction is that all players have to be using a save file in the same game mode, Normal, Creative or Survival...

… But if you don’t have a compatible save, we’re told you can join another player as a guest, presumably with standardised equipment.

The focus is very much on playing together, but you can attack your fellow players. It might be more trouble than it’s worth - when I blew up someone’s ship, they respawned halfway across the planet, which was a bit of a faff for everyone.

Starships are strictly assigned to the player that owns them, and they’re still all one-seaters, so you can’t pick up passengers.

But you can share almost everything else - transferring items across inventories now gives you the option to send any item to any player in your party.

A player can also activate Photo Mode while the rest of the party carries on playing, meaning you can stage some lovely shots.

If one player owns a Capital Ship they can accept new multiplayer missions.