No Man's Sky Beyond is a mega update coming this month

No Man's Sky's latest big update has been cooking away since Hello Games released the excellent Next update last year. Beyond introduces sweeping changes to multiplayer and No Man's Sky's social layer, which was essentially non-existent at launch, and VR support.

Instead of releasing it bit by bit, Hello Games has saved up three updates and rolled them into one mega update. We've only been given a brief taste of it, 15 minutes in No Man's Sky VR, but it seems like a perfect match.

"No Man's Sky is such a great fit for VR that suddenly experiencing it in virtual reality felt completely natural to me," Chris Livingston wrote in his hands-on. "The key to tricking your brain in VR, I've found, is for the experience to feel as intuitive and normal as possible. Even though work on No Man's Sky VR isn't yet done, I already felt perfectly at home inside it. Whatever voodoo is required to make a game feel just right in VR, Hello Games seems to have nailed it."

The rest of the update remains a bit of a mystery. Hello Games teased its plans back in March, saying it was working on a "radical new social and multiplayer experience which empowers players everywhere in the universe to meet and play together," but we've not heard much since.

No Man's Sky Beyond is due out on August 14.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.