No Man's Sky Studio Won't Be Talking About Its New Game for a While - But It's Going to Be Big

Sean Murray is working on Hello Games' next major game, which he's hoping will be even larger than his last creation, No Man's Sky. Exactly what that means is not yet clear, and will likely remain so for some time, because Murray says Hello Games "learned our lesson" after opening up too early about No Man's Sky. We first learned about the "huge, ambitious" new game earlier this month. Speaking to IGN ahead of the release of the No Man's Sky: Origins update, Murray confirmed that he is currently working on both No Man's Sky and the new game – but Hello Games isn't discussing specifics about the new project right now. "I mean, look, we have learned our lesson. We don't want to start talking about anything too early", explains Murray, referencing No Man's Sky's extremely open (and occasionally controversial) pre-release. "The only reason we talked at all about it was because we released our most recent game, Last Campfire, which was the first thing to come out since No Man's Sky. It's done by a separate team that we supported within the studio. But when we talk to press about it, a lot of them came at it from the angle of, 'Oh, well you did Joe Danger before. You've done No Man's Sky, and I guess you're doing Joe Danger-size games again.' [...] We didn't want people to have that impression, because it's not exactly true." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/23/sean-murray-explains-no-mans-sky-origins"] Murray makes clear that the new game is aiming to be an even larger project than No Man's Sky: "I would hope that there's a line between Joe Danger to No Man's Sky. And then hopefully, we continue up on that line. Personally, I came away from No Man's Sky with a lot of hunger going forward for things that we have yet to do and things that we've yet to prove. So this project will be a big focus for me and the guys." It's worth noting that size, in this case, does not necessarily mean the scope of the game's world – No Man's Sky's universe is made up of billions of planets, which may just be a difficult marker to beat in literal terms. Instead, Murray is likely referring to the complexity and depth the next game can offer – although what that specifically means remains unknown. He does, however, mention that Hello has next-gen devkits right now, and mentions that the part of the reason the team is excited for new consoles is because of this project. Closing the discussion, Murray reiterates that Hello Games is a developer more interested in major new projects than smaller experiments after No Man's Sky: "As a studio, we definitely are very focused on doing new, big, ambitious things." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=no-mans-sky-origins-update-screenshots&captions=true"]

As for right now, Murray's been concentrating on No Man's Sky: Origins, the game's 3.0 update that adds a huge amount of variety to the game's existing universe, including new terrain, weather effects and more. It also adds giant sand worms for the first time, which is just amazing.

[poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.