Do you, like me, find yourself firing up No Man’s Sky with giddy enthusiasm with every new update, eager to sample Hello Games’ latest delights, only to become immediately overwhelmed, prod a few things hesitantly, then turn it off half an hour later clouded in an air of bewilderment? Then allow me to introduce you to No Man’s Sky’s latest Expedition: Cartographers.
Expeditions, in case you’re out of the loop (or, equally likely, at the other end of the loop, still trying to figure out everything that got released in-between), are effectively No Man’s Sky’s stab at live-service-style seasonal content. They’re limited-time, curated experiences that condense and reshuffle the game’s sprawling tangle of systems into a series of progression-based milestone challenges that plop everyone on the same starting planet and reward fun cosmetic doo-hickeys to those that get to the end.
Previous Expeditions have sent players planet-hopping their way across the universe, but No Man’s Sky’s latest effort is something a bit different, taking place almost exclusively on a single planet as participants work through the steps required to get their incredibly broken ship airborne. Essentially, it’s the main mode’s opening ten minute tutorial expanded out into something considerably more involved as you try to restore the ludicrously extravagant technology inside your very, very fancy (but regrettably loan-only) starship.
What makes Expedition 3 particularly great is that this elaborate reworking of No Man’s Sky’s intro scenario pulls in a significant number of the more peripheral systems and processes heaped into the game during its last five years of post-launch development – the kind of stuff that’s all too easy to overlook alongside the flashier headline additions.
Here though, they’re mandatory for progression, spread across five tiers of challenges structured to encourage you to explore and tackle each objective in a relatively linear fashion. Completing one goal unlocks various rewards and these usually include the next bit of essential tech needed to complete another challenge, gain its rewards, and so on. This way, you’re able to focus on, and engage with, each newly introduced element one by one, rather than being immediately buried beneath No Man’s Sky’s quivering heap of systems, as tends to happen when playing normally.