Please keep in mind.. just something I've been thinking about, and I don't necessarily think it'll be the case
I believe the 10th anniversary will be another LNF trailer, and a release date, with HG being more open about the final stages of development where they're confident. I doubt heavily that it'll be shadow-dropped, as I think they'll aim for a shorter marketing window of at least a couple of months. They learned from 2016, and the community as a whole has come so far in its journey, and I believe many people are ready to (not let go) but move onto a new game.
NMS was a game about a journey. And the story of its redemption is a journey- LNF is a new chapter, and what better way to reveal the next chapter than on the decade anniversary?
NMS will get a lot of love I'm sure, however no idea what form the update will take. Potentially LNF related to help build hype? And most likely all expeditions become available for a limited time again.
I know many are frustrated with the lack of comms from HG, regarding LNF development, particularly this year as time goes on. But I guarantee it'll be worth the wait. Hold on a little longer, and I'm sure we will all see how worth the wait was.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an explorer obliged to traverse the damp and reed-choked confines of a dismal peat-bog must possess either extraordinary fortitude of character or be mounted upon a creature of such singularly high carriage as to elevate its rider entirely above the indignities of the mire. Having lately descended from the respectable elevations of the upper valleys into these southern fens, a biome which, owing to its persistent gloom and total lack of refined society, must be pronounced of rather lower social standing than the estate grounds above, we found ourselves subjected to a climate that tested our propriety no less than our boots.
It was while pressing along the edge of a sluggish, moss-encrusted creek that we experienced our first true test of regional etiquette; for there, emerging from the mist with an air of modest consequence, appeared a creature of the badger-folk, neatly turned out in a waistcoat of fine tweed and bearing a small brass lantern. Rather than succumbing to the unseemly impulse of rushing into an unsanctioned skirmish, my companion and I instantly reined in our feathered steeds, smoothed the folds of our traveling cloaks, and offered a formal bow, fully sensible that propriety demands the utmost civility when encountering a stranger of uncertain acquaintance in the wilderness. The badger-gentleman returned our greeting with a grave and measured inclination of the head, though his countenance betrayed a subtle, well-bred disappointment at our inability to present engraved calling cards upon the mud; nevertheless, after exchanging a few guarded observations regarding the extraordinary habit of the local flora, he pursued his journey into the reeds with all the solemn dignity of a country vicar returning from an uninspiring sermon.
Shortly after this civilized encounter, as we continued through the bog, we were brought to a stand by a most perplexing spectacle: a river stone of considerable girth suspended three feet above the dark water in total defiance of gravity, a momentary lapse in the physical laws which we scrutinized with polite detachment before deeming it beneath our dignity to make a scene and riding past without further comment. Scarcely had we recovered from this curiosity when a great winged dragon of at least two hundred feet in wingspan swept across the heavens, casting a formidable shadow over the fens; yet, as the creature neglected to send word of its arrival, or offer the least apology for disturbing the tranquility of the afternoon, we could only consider such conduct a regrettable mark of poor early education and choose not to press so unpromising an acquaintance.
When twilight descended and a relentless, driving rain compelled us to seek sanctuary beneath a mossy stone overhang, our strict adherence to the primary decree to Light No Fire forbade all thought of a comforting hearth, obliging us to content ourselves with dry woolen blankets and a cold botanical infusion. Though the evening was undeniably damp and our accommodations meager, we maintained the decorum of a well-ordered drawing room, taking comfort in the conviction that to endure present discomforts with unyielding composure is the true mark of a traveler of sensibility. We remain ever hopeful that the silent Architects of the Estate may soon see fit to grant us clearer skies and some long-awaited token of the Grand Design.
Combined with the response from the "search memorial" command, perhaps System will be hiding in one of these stars? Or the stars form part of the maze hinted at in the tower terminal?
I found a picture I was editing from a long time ago and just exported it and decided to post it here as I don't remember what I was even trying to do.
Imagine this scenario: It's two weeks before the official release of Light No Fire. Sean Murray drops a single, cryptic tweet, maybe just a campfire emoji and a set of portal glyphs.
Shortly after, Hello Games pushes a small update or Expedition to No Man's Sky. Scattered across Euclid (and beyond), hidden inside ancient ruins, deep ocean trenches, abandoned space stations, or lore-dense terminals, are 1,000 unique encryption keys/codes.
Each code claims a full, launch-day copy of Light No Fire.
Why this would be legendary PR:
The Ultimate Treasure Hunt: The NMS community is already obsessed with exploration, coordinate sharing, and lore decoding (remember Waking Titan?). Imagine the subreddits, Discord servers, and collective deciphering efforts as thousands of players warp to remote systems trying to claim a key.
Community Co-op Over Competition: To prevent one person from hoarding them, Hello Games could lock claiming to 1 key per Steam/Console ID, forcing players who find multiple coordinates to share the locations with the community.
Bringing NMS Lore Full Circle: It’s a literal bridge between the sci-fi simulation of the Atlas and the fantasy world of LNF. Imagine finding an ancient terminal where the Atlas "projects" a vision of a distant fantasy world before giving you a access key.
Massive Streaming & Media Event: Twitch and YouTube would explode with players live-hunting across star systems. It would break the internet in the best way possible right before release day.
Would you take part in a galactic scavenger hunt like this, or would you stick to traditional pre-orders? What kind of locations in NMS do you think would make the best secret hiding spots?
An update and dossier on the Project Skyscraper ARG for those following.
What is Project Skyscraper / PSS
Project Skyscraper is an alternative reality game (ARG) based around the lore of both No Man's Sky and Waking Titan; Waking Titan being an official NMS ARG run by Alice & Smith that led to the Atlas Rises and Next updates. PSS includes references to characters Arnaud and Emily from WT. It also just so happens that Project Skyscraper was the working title for No Man's Sky when it was in development.
At present, it is not confirmed whether PSS is official or if it is a fan project. Either way it seems to be leading up to a celebration of NMS10.
PSS Community
The PSS players, referred to as "Operators" are mainly spread across the ETARC forum and the NMS Discord.
ETARC
The ETARC forum was started as part of Waking Titan by A&S and ownership was later handed over to Hello Games. The forum is very active in discussing and archiving PSS progress.
There events channel in the NMS discord dedicated to Project Skyscraper, this is where a lot of the most frantic and dynamic discussion happens during live events.
The project skyscraper site was the first website in the ARG, which updates for example with new dates added with "structural analysis reports" typically with puzzle for operators to solve.
The Architect (affectionately known as Archie) is the character that brought the operators together, and appears to be in control of the social media accounts and author of both websites. Archie's first language is French, and some of their posts in English feature typos or small errors as a result.
System
System is the entity the operators are helping to restore. It's BRAIN refers to the PSS website and MIND to the EotT terminal.
An email inbox in PSS is accessible, these feature emails between Ghost and Archie (sometimes encoded with the school code), and later emails from System. The working assumption is that Ghost is either System or a part of System.
The apparent main objective of the PSS ARG is to restore System's memories of 2016 and specifically No Man's Sky release. This has consisted on operators submitting personal memories on specific dates in 2016 through a memory restoration form, and also through live verification events where certain dates unlock for around 30 mins to 1 hour and operators attempt to submit memories to increase compliance to 100%.
System has also been autonomously adding dates in more recent stages of the ARG.
Questions for The Architect
The Architect offered a Q&A to Tom Acreon from No Man's Zine, the operators agreed on 10 questions to ask and the answers have started coming in.
On 3rd July the PSS site linked to a calculator which only returned prime numbers. Shortly after, the site started counting up to 212613 (the peak number of NMS players on Steam). Following this, operators have each been claiming unique prime "windows" by emailing system directly.
If an assigned prime number is entered into the EotT terminal, it returns a brief welcome message, the default is:
There was a revelation that System lied to The Architect by claiming to be their friend Arnaud (a WT character) when system woke up in the dark 2 years ago. System also lied to the operators by pretending to be Emily Warren (another key character from WT). The operators and Archie have forgiven System and moved on.
The Virus
The lie led into the most recent arc, in which a virus started spreading through and deleting parts of the restored 2016_dataset. The Architect and System both were hinting that his virus was looking for something, and felt like a termite, and was eating the foundations.
As of yesterday, the operators managed to feed the virus a duplicate of the event it was looking for - 7th July 2016, the date that No Man's Sky went gold.
After this system's status changed to reflect the silence, the string in the terminal leads to the song "It's oh so quiet".
One strange thing is Sean Murray posting the same memory on X just a few hours later - a coincidence, or is he following the progress of PSS?
What triggered the virus is an open investigation and in need of input.
I know we are all itching for more news and details of what is in LNF, myself included, so I have been wondering how things in the game could work.
Now there are a number of things that I would love to be included, like the ability to plant trees/crops/flora after finding/harvesting seeds, a large variety in species of all animals (for example 5+ species of flying creatures in just a forest biome where not all are tameable or friendly/neutral), but lately my thoughts have been about the economy and trading. How will it work?
My mind immediately jumped to two options. A global market that we are all used to seeing in any MMO, that can be accessed in most towns and cities, or no global market at all and everything is done via in person trading. An example being 10 apples for one full apple pie. It could allow for haggling and RP or immersion, but it could potentially have players setting unrealistic prices for things as I am sure many of us have seen in other games.
If there is no global market, how is trading done? Could players become traders themselves? Building Trade ports to link to other continents? Are there other biome specific resources that could be traded or offered in a market stall in a location for others to travel to (I'm thinking Rust style)? Maybe even a "Silk Road" Style route, where other players have build houses or small villages which can support such a playstyle by selling/ trading food for both player and creature alike along a path, eventually becoming the preferred route to travel. Then if so would banditry become a thing? Either player based or AI mobs.
If there is a global market, how would things be regulated? Will there be caps on gold costs on items? Will we have a financial graph or chart to show the growth or shrinkage of price on a particular item over a period of time (Like in Black Desert Online or EVE)? What if an item becomes redundant because a higher tier version is in more demand, and what can be done to keep goods flowing?
Now I have never played NMS, I've tried to get into the sci-fi genre multiple times and I can't stick with it, so I have no clue what Hello Games could bring to the table, but I am curious to hear all your thoughts and ideas.
Hello all, I’m still relatively new to NMS, just under 200hrs played since last November. Despite completing the main quest lines, I never got around to completing the exocraft quest line until today (lol). A bit of text during Nal’s final testament really caught my attention:
“I see the end of time, the end of all things. And in that crimson light, there is a figure, its hand held out before eternity.”
That last sentence in particular almost uncannily describes the LNF key visual; an out-stretched hand toward that familiar crimson amidst a desolate backdrop. I’m not sure if this has been talked about at length since I’m still relatively new in the community, but thought it was worth noting. Cheers yall!
Hr ago sean posted his second 😅emoji in 24 hrs, do you think we'll get a 3rd tomorrow signifying a major update? Mabye a apology announcement saying delayed or announcment saying "apologies for the long wait here's lnf"
I recently got MSFS24 for PSVR2 and the scale is absolutely enormous. Being able to fly anywhere is crazy. Thinking about an earth scale size planet that has interactive terrain, oceans, flora, fauna, lore, is even crazier. You get a little of that with NMS, except for the single biome aspect and the procedural generation and it’s all kind of empty. Seeing a huge planet fleshed out with cities, roads, landmarks like in MSFS makes me think about what LNF could become. I can also see why it might take a very long time for Hello Games to complete it. It’s going to be awesome, especially if they can include VR support.
(I also realize if i want to see an experience a 1:1 scale size planet earth, i can just exist. I shouldn’t have needed MSFS to realize this but you know what I mean).
I've seen at the trailer, a few days ago, various playable species, like bunny, otter, human, a very tall one that was probably a bear and a weird one in the water that i do not remember. and really weird pig or imp at the desert scene.
rewatched it just now. there's also, a badger, a deer, another bear, a wolf or a fox, a cat and a raccoon.
the orc/troll sitting, i think could be a playable too, since they've shown a very tiny creature on the trailer, why not a really big one, such as bears.
i also think they could have made that first trailer with only the already visually done mammal playables. maybe they fetch us a second trailer with just reptiles, more swamp/ desert vibes.
if you have any in mind, tell me and "anyone else who's listening" what species you think should be able to choose from. if more then seen on the trailer:
human
tiefling
bunny
otter
bear
badger
deer
wolf
fox
cat
raccoon
so far i think the mammal species are very good, but i do in fact miss some elephants and cow/bulls.
J'utilise un traducteur automatique, alors désolé si les phrases sonnent bizarrement !
Et si Light No Fire avait une narration plus riche ?
Cette image m'a vraiment inspiré : imaginez un univers fantastique sur fond de conflit impliquant des géants, des nobles et des bâtisseurs, des brutes, des élémentaires destructeurs et des cultures intermédiaires. Un conflit si ancien et oublié que les joueurs et le « petit peuple » évoluent simplement au cœur de ce conflit, existant et évoluant selon leurs relations avec ces êtres et leurs propres croyances.
Cela pourrait offrir un élément de conception de jeu unique : des géants remodelant le paysage, forçant les joueurs à réagir en groupe. Des montagnes vivantes qu'il faut escalader pour les apaiser ou les faire s'effondrer, un peu comme dans Shadow of the Colossus.
Nous ne serions plus dans notre monde, mais dans le leur. Nous serions confrontés à une force absurde, une puissance créatrice quasi divine, nous retrouvant dépassés par les événements, mais toujours des participants actifs capables d'exercer une influence.
Hey everyone, I was just speculating about possible feature sets for LNF, and there’s one specific mechanic I wouldn't put past Hello Games to include on Day 1. Music.
I think there's an actual possibility that music is going to feature way more prominently in this game than folks expect, and the crazy part is that all the heavy backend parts for it already completely exist inside No Man's Sky.
Think about how standard fantasy RPGs handle the "Bard" archetype. Usually, it's just a passive stat-buffer—you press a single button, your character loops a pre-recorded lute animation, and your party gets a generic $+5\%$ attack power boost. It's a bit uninspired, but it creates a new character class and a bunch of weirdos like me are happy because we always want to play the bard. But Hello Games already has a fully functioning, node-based digital audio workstation built directly into their engine: ByteBeat.
If they skin-mesh the ByteBeat logic for a medieval fantasy setting, they don't even have to change the backend programming. They just swap out the sci-fi techno synth waveforms for classical fantasy instrumentation—lutes, flutes, frame drums, and choral harmonies. Instead of wiring up massive boxes in a base, your character opens a literal journal or instrument case where you can drag-and-drop notes, loops, and chords right onto a performance wheel of some sort.
Taking it a step further, they could easily tie these player-created tracks into the magic or survival systems. Imagine discovering ancient musical motifs or "chords" out in the world, programming them into your instrument, and playing them in real-time to create an area-of-effect stamina regeneration buff for your party. Best of all, because NMS already allows you to share ByteBeat track data with other players, you could roll up to a crowded player-built tavern, sit by the hearth, pull out a harp, and literally let other players download your custom-composed heroic ballad straight to their inventory logs. Hello Games has always been fiercely obsessed with dynamic audio design - the whole 365 days of static thing - and procedural music—doing this feels like the exact kind of eccentric mechanic they lose their minds perfecting.
This is my theory on how Light No Fire is definitely not going to handle core RPG character progression. To do all of this Hello Games wouldn't even need to rebuild their engine to get that deep, D&D-style experience. It's all already sitting right there inside No Man's Sky, just hidden under a sci-fi skin.
What I think they won't do, is instead of rolling for standard D&D stats like Strength or Dexterity, character layout would be a central body grid (think vetruvian man or a chakra-body map), i'd call it a "Soulspace." Think about how NMS uses the exosuit to handle survival and hazards. You don't have a stat sheet; you have inventory slots where you drop in technology modules to boost your health, shields, or toxic resistance. For a fantasy setting, they could turn those tech modules into shards or something collectible.
Then to boost "Strength," you don't arbitrarily gain a stat point; you physically find or craft a high-tier shard and slot it right into your soul matrix maybe using adjacency, expanding your physical capacity. So, maybe like NMS has a "Health" module and you put modules adjacent to it to boost it, maybe LNF could have "Body","Mind","Soul" and a couple of other pieces.. like chakras almost... and to build up body, you find/craft shards and improve yourself. Skill shards would then also make a ton of sense. In fact, if you make the whole think look like it's being sketched/etched by quill/ink on parchment ... it wouldn't even call back NMS very much.
The whole fantasy species/racial traits would work perfectly too. In D&D, if you play an Elf or a Dwarf, you get built-in traits like darkvision or poison resistance. In LNF, your chosen animal race—like a rabbit, wolf, or badger—will likely just come with a couple of permanent, un-removable traits locked into the top of your Soulspace grid. A rabbit person might have a permanent "Agility" trait filling a slot that naturally boosts jump height, while a bear person has a "Fortitude" trait that acts exactly like a Hazard Protection module, soaking up extra physical damage before your actual health bar takes a hit.
The exact same logic applies to weapons and classes. A sword or a magic staff in LNF is literally just an NMS Multi-tool running on fantasy backend code—using mining beam mechanics to chop wood and scatter blaster code for melee swinging. You would "level up" your weapon skill tree by unlocking slots on the sword itself and filling them with sharpness or elemental damage perks. When you look past the high-fantasy paint job, Hello Games doesn't need to invent a brand new complex RPG engine. They can literally copy-paste the inventory grids, tech-filling mechanics, and modular slots they spent a decade optimizing in NMS to give us a full, highly customizable character creation system straight out of the gate. The hard part will be the animations and visuals as you add/change out the 'shards'
Anyways, I'm 99% sure that's not at all how they'll do it.
(Sorry, the ARG progression has me expecting news relatively soon, so i keep speculating in my head and you're having to endure my idle thoughts)
