Showing no sign of slowing down after a 2020 filled with game-changing updates, Hello Games starts off the fifth year of No Man’s Sky with the “Companions” update, which gives players the ability to befriend procedurally-generated alien creatures, turning them into loyal universe-exploring companions.
After last year’s mech, living ships, and space horror updates, I should no longer be surprised by the quantity and quality of updates Hello Games regularly delivers for never-ending space opera No Man’s Sky, but once more I am completely floored. Following years of poking at, shooting, or running from the various critters encountered on exotic planets, today’s “Companions” update gives us a whole new way to interact with these strange beasts. Instead of just screenshotting a cute creature and moving on, we can now adopt them as pets, training them to accompany us on our space adventures. Adopted pets can be trained to aid in exploration, performing tasks like finding specific resources, providing light, finding settlements, and even hunting dangerous fauna.
Ride pets. Decorate pets. Form bonds with pets that allow you to speak with them. Pets can lay eggs, which we can use to breed completely new creatures, collecting and trading with other players. Thanks to No Man’s Sky’s procedural generation, no two pets will be the same, their behavior determined by species, ecosystem, and further defined by player training.
This being Hello Games, this massive update drops today across all platforms. Just transforming the entire universal ecology in one fell swoop, as they do. Check out the full notes for the “Companions” update here. I’ll be off-planet making pals out of squiddly-sqooches.