Have you ever dreamed of becoming mayor of your own backwater town in the deep recesses of infinite space? Well, the best space exploration game of the decade just released another free expansion that will let you fulfill that particular fantasy to your heart’s content.
No Man’s Sky just dropped its latest update titled Beacon, a complete overhaul of what’s possible in planetary settlements made throughout the galaxy. As detailed in another one of Hello Games’ excellent trailers, Beacons allows players to discover and lead robotic towns as mayor. As a settlement leader, players can make crucial decisions about a town’s production and create new structures like bars and fishing ponds for townsfolk to enjoy. Keeping people happy will be a big part of this.
“You can upgrade the settlements,” Hello Games Managing Director Sean Murray says. “Each inhabitant has their own little backstory.”
Being a leader won’t just be about growing your town into a thriving center. Players will have to protect their settlement from outsiders and invaders by hiring a defensive squadron. They’ll also act as the mediator who resolves disputes between town inhabitants. The trailer promises this is just the beginning of Hello Games’ plans for overhauled settlement mechanics.
Almost all the activities in game apart from gradually upgrading your ship and multi-tool are optional, and mainly ‘for fun’. So, focus on learning more about what upgrading your ship would actually entail, and same for the multi-tool. Overall the game is fairly easy, so enjoy the ride rather than seeking out ‘end game’ or serious challenge. I think of it kind of like a fantasy of american Car Culture combined with a focus on exploring a bit of many cool looking worlds. You find a really badass car/ship you love, and tweak it out until it’s amazing. You also do other stuff if you want to, maybe coming up with your own RPG style story that you invent just to give yourself other goals. You will probably get rich before long, so then you maybe collect more ships and pimp them out and build cool base (or 5), or get into the Mayor thing, or some of the other game activities. Or just wander until you have had enough of checking out cool planets around the galaxy.