It’s N7 Day, that wonderful time of year when alien fanciers the world over come together, look at BioWare, and say ‘come on then, do a thing’. Well, the good news is that this year, BioWare’s done a thing with No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games. As of today, Mass Effect’s Normandy is back in NMS, arrving alongside some other new features.
Yep, after warning folks that this year’s N7 Day would be “quieter” due to Dragon Age: The Veilguard just having become a released thing, BioWare’s at least done a nice collab, regardless of what else it might have or not have up its sleeves. Plus, it’s with a game that’s had plenty of other interesting updates and additions this year.
As outlined in the blog post about No Man’s Sky’s latest bunch of new features, Hello Games has been gifted the keys to The Normandy for the first time since 2021, so it can temporarily add the ship to its galaxy for a limited-time expedition dubbed “The Beachhead”.
“Mass Effect fans know that this legendary frigate only appears when it is most needed,” the post reads, “Today, and for the next two weeks, as a love-letter from one science fiction game to another, we are giving everyone another chance to encounter the Normandy in an overhauled version of the original mission [from 2021] and add it to their collection.”
Aside from that, there are a couple of other new additions to NMS arriving today, with one being cross-save support for a bunch of platforms, starting off as a beta for a “small number of players” you can sign up for here, and expanding to everyone else via an invite “in the coming weeks”.
“Adding Cross-Save for us is a little bit like moving house, the longer people have lived there the more complicated it is to move them,” Hello Games writes, “We also have players who played once at launch, eight years ago, suddenly loading up that save on a platform that didn’t even exist back then! For these reasons we have secretly been introducing the technology for this update for over 6 months.”
Finally, if you’re one of the people who’s just taken delivery of a PS5 Pro – or plans to – NMS has gotten a free enhanced version aimed it that’s available right now. As for what it’ll do, Hello writes: “As well as a much sharper resolution at higher framerates, the increased power of the PlayStation 5 Pro has enabled us to ramp up the graphical quality across the board. Players on PlayStation 5 Pro will see improved lighting, with ultra quality reflections and higher quality ambient occlusion in all modes.”
Are you planning to celebrate N7 Day with a bit of No Man’s Sky in between dips into different Mass Effect entries? Let us know below!