It seems impossible to comprehend now, but in 1969 three government employees climbed into a rocket and blasted themselves to the moon—even though there were no fish there. They bounced around, they drove a buggy, they picked up rocks, but the journey was ultimately pointless because there were no space ponds and no moon fish to catch. Why do you think we stopped going?
Fast forward to today, and it’s exceedingly rare that I’m even gonna bother to play a videogame if there isn’t a fishing minigame in it. Y’all playing Deadlock? Cool, have fun with that. Let me know when they patch in some fishin’.
So I’m excited to see infinite space sandbox No Man’s Sky has apparently run out of other things to add to itself and finally patched in the one thing it always truly needed: fishing. The Aquarius Update arrives today, and all you intrepid Travelers now have a legitimate reason to restlessly explore the trillions of planets in No Man’s Sky. The new space race is on: who can find the most serene and beautiful fishing spot in the galaxy?
The fishing trailer looks great, especially considering how much water in No Man’s Sky was upgraded in July’s Worlds update, and I can’t wait to cast my line and see what I catch. There’s not a lot of actual fish-catching shown: mostly some nibbles as the bobber, well, bobs, so it’s hard to say if it’s just a reflex game where you tap a button to make your catch, or if there’s more to it.
The trailer shows more fishing-related features, like a deep-water jetpack, messages in bottles, fishing traps you can set and return to later, and new fishy cooking recipes. Maybe the coolest feature is the fishing skiff, a hovering platform you can use to chill out on over the waves while you cast your line. There’s also a new multi-phase community fishing expedition with goals and rewards
You can also see a logbook that keeps track of your catches. The log is an 8×4 grid, and it looks like it contains 6 pages, which means there’s (probably) about 192 fish to catch. The types of fish look pretty varied: jellyfish, sea snails, octopuses, starfish, turtles, sea cucumbers, and since you’re fishing across countless alien worlds, there are plenty of weird ones, like the “Singing Sea Snail,” the “Magma Shark,” and most intriguingly, the “Hypnotic Octopus.”
The No Man’s Sky Aquarius update is out now. Save me a spot at the fishin’ hole.