Hello Games founder Sean Murray releases the patch notes for the first major free content update for the upcoming space exploration game No Man's Sky.

After five years of development, Hello Games has finished No Man's Sky, an ambitious space exploration game that has been anticipated by gamers since it was first revealed to the public in 2013. Instead of taking a well-deserved vacation to celebrate the game's completion, Sean Murray and his team have been hard at work on its first major update, which he has now detailed in a post on the game's official website.

The first update for No Man's Sky will be available tomorrow for those reviewing the game, and those that have managed to acquire early copies. From the looks of the patch notes, it will be quite substantial, making a number of important changes to No Man's Sky, and expanding on quite a few of its features.

For example, players can expect to encounter more diverse creatures, ships, and plant life. Some of the 18 quintillion planets are being tweaked as well, and there will now be "extreme hazardous" ones that have dangerous blizzards and dust storms for players to contend with. Terrain generation is also being improved, so players can look forward to seeing more varied environments in the game after downloading the patch.

Many of No Man's Sky's gameplay mechanics are being refined as well. Trading will now be more sophisticated, based on a galactic economy that can change over time. Alien creatures are also being made more complex; not only will they have their own alien languages, they will also have their own diets. Players will be able to feed aliens they come across in the game, and if fed correctly, the aliens can become pets or protectors.

According to Murray, this significant content update will be the first of many for No Man's Sky, and luckily for fans, the current plan is to have all of them be free. It's hard to say what all of these patches will entail, but Murray has said that fans can expect No Man's Sky updates to allow for base building and the ability to own "giant space freighters," in addition to visual enhancements.

With Hello Games releasing such a substantial day one update for No Man's Sky, it just goes to show that in the modern age of game development, work doesn't stop once the game is shipped. Hopefully all the hard work from the Hello Games team pays off, and No Man's Sky lives up to the substantial hype surrounding it when it releases this coming week.

No Man's Sky will be available on August 9th for PS4 and August 12th for PC.

Source: No Man's Sky