No Man's Sky is a year old, and it's getting a huge improvement

It's been a while since we've heard from No Man's Sky – almost a year, in fact. No Man's Sky launched in North America one year ago today, and though its release was hyped to extreme amounts, the end result disappointed a lot of players to the point where the developer, Hello Games, received a lot of harsh criticism. After a couple of minor updates, Hello Games went mostly silent, but now the developer is back with a brand new update for the year-old game.

In a post shared to the No Man's Sky subreddit, Hello Games chief Sean Murray addresses the player base that's still spending time with the game all these months later. In his message, he details a new patch for the title, which will push No Man's Sky to version 1.3. The update is being called "Atlas Rises" by the folks at Hello Games.

Most notably, this new update is fleshing out the story a bit. That won't be too hard to do, considering that No Man's Sky didn't have much in the way of story to begin with – the game was always more about exploration than anything else. Details are pretty much non-existent at this point, but Murray says that patch notes will be coming shortly before the update releases. Hopefully those will shed more light on what these story additions entail.

"Update 1.3 will release this week and will be available for free to all No Man's Sky players," Murray writes. "We're calling it Atlas Rises. It focuses on improving the central story of No Man's Sky and adds the ability to quick travel between locations using portals. Patch notes will be made available shortly before the update goes live."

That new fast travel feature will probably be welcomed by players who have grown tired of back tracking, but make no mistake: the meat of this update will certainly be that improved story mode. We'll find out just when that update is releasing later this week, but for now, head down to the comments section to tell us if you're still playing No Man's Sky!