No Man's Sky: Companions Update Lets You Adopt An Alien Pet

No Man's Sky has received another update, titled Companions, which lets players adopt and breed alien companions. The Companions update launches today and will let players "tame, breed, train and even speak to the creatures they encounter." No Man's Sky has long been known for the inimitable alien creatures that inhabit the game's procedural planets, but this update will let players interact with them on a deeper level. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/17/no-mans-sky-companions-official-trailer"] Explorers can adopt creatures as sidekicks for their interstellar adventures, and the tamed beasts can be trained "to scan for resources, mark out hazards, provide light, hunt dangerous fauna, find settlements, excavate buried treasure or even mine for materials with their own shoulder-mounted mining lasers." Once a companion is nurtured they will also lay eggs which can be incubated by the player. A new system called the Egg Sequencer will also let players genetically modify their alien eggs to create variant and rare species, which can be sold to other travellers. "A wide range of customisable accessories and decals" will also be made available so players can create a stylish companion. Hello Games notes that "no two creatures are alike," and that the personality of the new companions will be defined "by their species and ecosystem." This will colour their emotional interactions with other players, who may also have a companion. You can also connect your companion to an Exosuit via a neural harness, and their alien thoughts will be "translated and sent directly to your internal communication channels," allowing players to communicate with their new alien friends. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=no-mans-sky-companions-update&captions=true"] Beyond the addition of companions, the update will also "bring significant improvements to load and warp times for PlayStation 4 players." You can check out full patch notes on the Hello Games website. Hello Games says that this is the start of the game's 5th anniversary festivities, but they "have a lot planned" for the rest of 2021. In other Hello Games news, Sean Murray has said that the studio won't be talking about its new game for a while, but that it's going to be big. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.