It appears that things are once again happening in the No Man's Sky 'Waking Titan' ARG that began way back in May 2017. As noted by Game Detectives (via Eurogamer), the Atlas Passes that were promised in an earlier stage of the ARG have begun to arrive, and rather than answering questions they are deepening the mystery.   

In late December, the tenth of 15 glyphs along the bottom of the Waking Titan website unlocked, leading to a password prompt and a Google Drive folder called 1.5 that's filled with images of the NMS logo reflected in various arrangements of mirrors. The names of the images, when strung together and converted from hex, decode to the letters "moirrr," an anagram for "mirror." The Myriad website, uncovered during an earlier stage of the ARG investigation, also contains the hex code for the word.   

An image in the background of the most recent glyph link makes reference to the completion of 10,000 passes, and says that "you should have them in time for the next phase." The first of those passes reportedly turned up on January 17: It was made of cardboard with a "textured pass" on it, a CSD category ranking, and another hexadecimal number that translated to "Phoenix." More numbers, including a CSD-ID and serial number, were on the back.  

Those numbers are now being collated in this Google Docs spreadsheet. All the entries so far appear to originate in Canada, although whether that's a matter of timing or something more significant is impossible to say. Gaming Detectives recommends that anyone submitting a pass includes all numbers on it, and a photo of the front as well.

No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray contributed to the tease with a January 10 tweet that also referenced mirrors, and contained an image of the Netflix series Black Mirror and an excerpt from an interview with Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, in which he says he's playing No Man's Sky and "there's an idea for the second season that's sprung from a procedurally generated universe." 

The whole thing seems incredibly complex, and there appears to be quite a bit left to come, as five glyphs on the Waking Titan site are still locked. The 1.5 references are also perplexing, because there hasn't been a 1.4 update yet: That could suggest that 1.4 will be a surprise drop, or too minor to warrant all this fuss, or perhaps will be skipped altogether. Or it might mean something else entirely—I'm bad at ARGs so while I find them interesting, I'm rarely much use when it comes to moving things forward. 

I am, however, happy to see that No Man's Sky is still a going concern, and I continue to hold out hope that it will eventually evolve into the game we were promised—or at least as close to it as we can reasonably expect. A full rundown of what's happened so far in the Waking Titan ARG is available here. 

Our Ongoing Game award goes to No Man's Sky. After a rocky 2016 launch, the game's in better shape after this year's updates. Check out our other GOTY awards here.

Phil Savage: Here's a new category for this year's awards, designed to recognise an older game that had a great 2017 through patches and free updates. And whatever you originally thought of No Man's Sky when it released last year, this year marked a period of significant growth and improvement.

Andy Kelly: At launch No Man's Sky felt like a shell of a game. I squeezed 20 hours out of it, which is not insignificant, but in that time I felt like I'd experienced everything this supposedly infinite universe had to offer. But over time, thanks to a procession of hefty free updates, the game has evolved into something much deeper and ultimately much better. Whether it's base-building, vehicles, new biomes, or the story's clearer, more hand-crafted structure, Hello has slowly been transforming the game into something approaching the grand promise of those early demonstrations. I still think there's a lot of room for improvement, including more varied planet surfaces, but the developer's efforts to expand, deepen, and improve its colourful space simulator is something I think we should celebrate.

Philippa Warr: I was one of those people who actually loved No Man’s Sky when it came out. Not in an all-encompassing passionate frenzy which blinded me to its shortcomings, nor the differences between marketing and game, but there was so much in that ambitious universe which already gave me joy. It was built for pottering in a way that reminded me of meandering along country trails with my camera, investigating pleasing views and tailing odd creatures. 

The first big update to the game—Foundation—came towards the end of 2016 bringing things like base building, freighters and farming. In terms of how that made the game feel, it didn't specifically impact how I played it because I wasn't interested in commerce or on settling down. I was content to drift along in normal mode.

But, taking a more general view, the update felt like a statement from developers, Hello Games, about how they would be approaching the game post-release. The update implied a willingness to be more flexible over what the game could be—instead of forcing players to keep moving, never settling, base-building was a specifically supported element of the game. There were also a couple of modes to tweak the difficulty should you fancy it. 

Foundation ended up being exactly that—a support structure and a statement of intent for 2017’s set of updates. Path Finder was the first and offered up vehicles, vehicle racing, base sharing, photo mode, permadeath mode, a whole bundle of quality of life improvements and more. It was photo mode which absolutely blew me away and either ruined or perfected the game for my purposes, depending on which way you approach it.

Photo mode was developed in collaboration with Dead End Thrills’s Duncan Harris. It lets you pause the game in the middle of what you're doing and switch into a free-ish camera mode. At that point you can line up your shots, apply filters as you might on Instagram, fiddle with FOV and depth-of-field, change the position of the sun in order to get the perfect shadows or the exact right time of day and more. Where I used to spend minutes on shots, I can now spend hours. I have previously spent entire sessions within the same five foot radius captivated by different light effects on a group of trees. 

I believe Chris Livingston rather liked photo mode too, but the big draw for him in that update was the ability to ram wildlife with his new space car. Perhaps we should have combined our interests for some kind of artsy inverse Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. 

Atlas Rises came in August and, along with terrain editing and ancient portals, it seemed to sow seeds for co-op play. Multiplayer, or rather the ability to "see" other people in your game is one of the big sticking points from launch—the reality of the game didn’t match what had been described during development. The ability still isn't exactly in the game but there's a version of the idea in that you can see other players as floaty orbs with proximity-based chat, and Hello Games are billing that as a precursor to some kind of synchronous co-op. 

These updates don't erase launch criticisms but they do reframe the game. Hello Games are using the process of post-release patches to respond to those criticisms and flesh out the game in ways that reflect and expand how people play it. More specific to my own interests is the fact that the game just keeps getting more beautiful through a multitude of changes both big and small. In my current game I’ve discovered a planet populated with trees that sprout octopus-like tentacles. Finally I’m ready to call somewhere home. I just have to stop taking pictures of it long enough to find a habitable base and claim the world as my own...

For more recent No Man's Sky words, check out Chris's experiences with the game's synthetic planets and other varied environments.

If you're looking for a new way to explore the procedurally generated splendors of No Man's Sky, you can now fly around in the Millennium Falcon—once you find it. The Morships for Atlas Rising Mod for No Man's Sky adds a dozen new ships, including the Falcon, to the game's procedural generation lists, meaning that a) the new spacecraft don't replace any existing ships, and b) they'll show up randomly as you explore. So, if you want to pilot Han Solo's famed smuggle-mobile from Star Wars, you'll have to keep your eyes peeled for it.

The ships have been crafted by a number of creators—see the mod's page for all the credits. All the ships are pretty sweet looking, and there's even a pod racer from The Phantom Menace included, if you can stomach the bad memories. As the ships appear on various docking pads and space stations you can purchase them as you would other ships. They might even show up as pirates and attack you.

One warning from the modder: "...uninstalling the mod will result in a crash to desktop if/when any save game tries to load the ships from the uninstalled mod." That's pretty serious, so keep it in mind if you decide you want to install this mod. The MorShips Mod will also be included in the next version of the (hopefully) soon to come RaYRoD's Overhaul. (I'd link to the old version of it, but it's been taken offline while its creator works on the next version).

There is something painfully sad about a man building everything from a strip club to a Taco Bell in a videogame where no one will ever interact with them. But such is the path that YouTuber Boid Gaming has embarked upon—a path to fill his No Man's Sky galaxy full of empty KFCs, McDonalds, and, yes, even a monolithic Pepsi can. This dude loves brands.

I wish I could understand what motivation there is for such an endeavor, but I can only guess that Boid Gaming, after getting to the center of No Man's Sky's galaxy and realizing there is no meaning or purpose, has gone absolutely mad. For several months, he has been showcasing his intergalactic fast food restaurants on his YouTube channel.

Here's a dramatic reveal of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

There's a surprising level of artistry here, in that each of his fast food restaurants definitely captures their aesthetic while still feeling suitably sci-fi. The No Man's Sky Foundation update introduced base building, but the tools aren't too complex, so putting together a rather nice looking McDonalds is a win in my books. But with each video I watch, I get a little sad seeing how empty these establishments are. They should be full of people, but instead, just like No Man's Sky, they're lifeless. I mean, can you even call it a strip club if no one is stripping inside of it?

And I don't even know where to begin talking about this giant Pepsi can he built. But I like to imagine that, millions of years from now, some civilization will discover its existence and send a manned mission to see it in person, triggering the conception of a giant, fizzy, god-baby.

Boid Gaming has a lot of impressive builds on his YouTube channel you should check out—especially if you just love brands. You can also check out this complete list of everything he's made so far and download his bases into your own version of No Man's Sky.