No Man's Sky just got a new update in time for the launch of PS VR2 after being teased by creator Sean Murray with one of his famously cryptic tweets. The Fractal update is the first major update since No Man's Sky got its big 4.0 update in October 2022, titled Waypoint, that saw the space sim arrive on the Nintendo Switch platform along with a raft of tweaks, content, and improvements for all platforms.
The Fractal update isn't exactly a big surprise. No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray habitually teases updates by tweeting singular emojis with no further context or clues about what exactly fans can expect. This time around Sean tweeted a snowflake emoji. Attempting to figure out what Murray is alluding to with his emojis has become a game of sorts among the No Man's Sky community. His seemingly innocuous tweets never fail to get the community excited, sharing their thoughts about to expect.
Fractal comes with a bevy of graphical enhancements as well as improvements to the overall gameplay geared at taking advantage of the PS VR2 Sense controllers. The update also adds features like gyroscopic controls for Switch and PlayStation, dynamic resolution scaling for PS5, a treasure catalog, and a brand new No Man's Sky expedition for all players titled "Utopia" that tasks players with reinvigorating a once-thriving star system.
The Fractal update may not be the most exciting since it mostly focuses on bringing No Man's Sky to PS VR2, but as the Waypoint update did before it, Fractal paves the way for bigger and better things to come in the future. No Man's Sky has gone from strength to strength since its infamously disastrous launch which has become a cautionary tale of sorts to developers who lay the hype on a little too thick, and also contributed to the general cynicism gamers seem to have around pre-ordering games.
Due to the Fractal update primarily being geared for the launch of PS VR2, it's unsurprising that it has mostly involved graphical and performance enhancements geared at making No Man's Sky a must-have title for PS VR2. Besides the new expedition, there isn't much to be excited about unless one is playing No Man's Sky on Switch; Fractal has arguably added more content and features for Nintendo's platform than any other. Perhaps the next update could add features that some fans have been longing for, such as ship customization and varied planetary biomes, but for now everyone can at least enjoy the new expedition together.
No Man's Sky is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.