No Man’s Sky’s Update Has Reminded Me How Cool Video Game Water Can Be

Earlier this week, No Man’s Sky announced its latest update, which apparently refreshes the entire universe to make it more diverse and lively. As part of the update, No Man’s Sky is also getting some graphical advancements from the studio’s upcoming survival game Light No Fire, and the most exciting bit of it for me is the new water technology.

I’m a slut for advanced water simulation. There’s something about a wave going “whoosh” that makes my brain go “brr.” While you all studied the blade, I studied the cresting of waves in Sea of Thieves. While you all racked up killstreaks in Call of Duty, I was racking up laps in the swimming pool on top of that one building in Uncharted 2. You know the one. And now that No Man’s Sky is stepping up its water game, I’m about to be studying alien waters like it’s my goddamn job.

There’s something about the fact that the sea, in all its mystifying expansiveness, can be captured by games now. Due to that, No Man’s Sky’s once-placid waters have come to life, and its immense universe feels even bigger and more vibrant now. Thanks to its 5.0 update, oceans now sway more realistically and generate waves. They have reflections and react to your ship skidding just above the surface, as well as to weather. You can now land in water, which makes it all that easier to dive in and explore the depths of the ocean, which was the subject of a past update to No Man’s Sky.

I’ve been fascinated by video game water for as long as I can remember. Since the moment I first drowned in games like Sly Cooper or Grand Theft Auto 3, they’ve been a point of fascination. Maybe it’s because I was taken with the beach as a kid, and loved to swim, or more appropriately, loved to ride on my grandmother’s back and pretend I was swimming. Perhaps it felt odd that games couldn’t reflect this pastime I loved so much. Either way, I loved trying to swim in games, especially when bodies of water felt like a boundary that I wanted to push on.

These days, the ability to traverse water is far more commonplace in games. As such, the impetus behind water in games has shifted. Whereas they used to be a boundary to stop you from doing something that wasn’t technically possible, bodies of water are now vehicles for incredible technical showcases. They now exemplify what is possible.

No Man’s Sky now feels real. Watching the waves be tugged on by storms makes it feel expressive. No Man’s Sky now houses a universe worth exploring if only to see how wave patterns vary depending on the environment and time of day. The ocean has now become another way to measure how unique and grand an experiment No Man’s Sky is, and folks, I think I hear its siren calls. If this is what we can expect from Light No Fire, which aims to simulate an entire world in vivid detail, I fear it may be over for me.