Out of the millions of creatures discovered in No Man’s Sky, there’s one monster in particular that has been perplexing players since launch: The giant desert snake.
The initial GIF in this image comes from the No Man’s Sky reveal trailer, which started circulating the web back in 2013. The snake wowed players so much, it became an anticipated discovery for some.
Years later, No Man’s Sky has populated its procedurally generated planets with all sorts of strange and disturbing creatures, but there’s still the question of whether or not the snake has appeared for anybody in-game yet.
Over on forums like neoGAF, users are debating whether or not the giant snake is actually in the game, because nobody seems to have proof of its existence yet. For some, the potential lack of giant creatures like the sand snake is a deal breaker. Others realise it’s only been day two of release, and with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets to explore, there’s a very real chance that we just haven’t stumbled upon the worm yet:
You can read through the rest of the thread and the discussion here, but something you’ll note is the rising tension between some hardcore players and developers Hello Games. Earlier this week, there was also some drama around two players who could not see each other in-game, despite being in the same exact locale. The slow discovery of giant creatures seems to be unfairly adding to the tension, too. Hell, for all we know someone has found the giant snake already, they just haven’t uploaded a video online yet.
For our part, no one at Kotaku has encountered a giant snake in the dozens of hours we’ve played (which makes sense, for a game of this scale). I can’t find anything on the giant snake online, either. We asked our 1.13 million followers on Twitter if they have encountered the snake, and so far, nobody has been able to procure definite visual proof. That said, people have found other curious creatures that come close…
@xpatriciah I want this world so bad. We have WORMSIGN!
Closest I’ve been are these spesswyrms. pic.twitter.com/7QILWsKI5A
— Derek Strickland (@DeekeTweak) August 11, 2016
The folks over at Hello Games definitely know that players are curious about the giant snake. Actually, Sean Murray, the director of No Man’s Sky, got asked directly during an AMA on Reddit whether or not the creatures were still in the game.
“Oh man, I hate questions like this, because like wouldn’t you just rather discover for yourself?” Murray wrote. “Huge creatures are out there, and I haven’t seen them on streams yet. They are rare.”
The wildest thing about all of this is that the giant snake may not even be the most out-there monster hiding within the game. In a 2014 interview with Game Informer, Sean Murray said that Hello Games was refraining from showing the public creatures that were particularly alien. He also noted that creatures would change depending on your in-game location:
Game Informer: So they’re going to be freakier and more abstract in the final game?
Sean Murray: Yeah, that’s possible, and that will happen actually more and more towards the center of the galaxy.
I don’t know about you, but knowing that things get weirder toward the centre of the galaxy actually motivates me to keep exploring within the game, especially if it means I might encounter cool giant animals.
Eventually, someone may or may not find the giant snake from the trailers. For now, though, the discussion and speculation around the giant worm is one of the best things about No Man’s Sky, because it means that aspects of the game are taking on a myth-like status. I’ve seen people online who think images of the giant snake aren’t real, but rather just Photoshops. I’ve seen people show off discovered planets with giant corridors, which may or may not have been dug by the native wildlife. I’ve heard mysterious moans and cries on certain planets that I can’t for the life of me figure out where they’re coming from. Is it just ambient noise? Is there something enormous out there, beyond the horizon?
I can’t wait to find out.
Comments
20 responses to “The Hunt For No Man’s Sky’s Mysterious Giant Snake”
So there are meant to be more species in this game than on earth?
So did they just add in a whole bunch of different features and then let the game randomly choose heads, arms, eyes or something? Because there is no way they actually made that many themselves.
I think all those features are procedurally generated.
All the creatures are procedurally generated- there’s a bunch of features/sizes/behaviours that are mixed together.
First couple planets I’ve visited had some similarities between them, but also some different ones so I think there’s a fair bit of variety
I’m quite wary of asking the internet if they’ve seen a giant snake/worm
The internet would never steer you in that direction. Never.
You should be. Check this glorious beast out. Dammit reddit is down. Watch this space…..
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/jZ1QJSD
Not mine, Im waiting for the pc version
That gif looks waaay better than the game looks now.
Go figure. People get excited about an unimaginably big universe and the get upset when they can’t discover everything immediately…
Welcome to the human condition lol
To be honest though, I find myself torn due to that very problem.
The vague communication from Hello games means I often question myself as I play.
I’m either seeing it all or only skating the micro edge and it’s kinda infuriating since you never know if the layer you peel back will be the last.
Without spoiling anything, I have already had two conclusions blown out of the water.
I thought I had seen enough to decide a truth about the game, only to jump galaxies and discover I had been too hasty.
I know what you mean about questioning yourself as you play. As I find myself walking across a seemingly barren area of a planet, I’m always questioning whether I should just turn back to my ship. But, if I do, will I miss something unique over the next rise? Such is the nature of procedural generation… I also found that being lost in a procedurally generated labyrinth of underground tunnels is terrifying: there’s no promise that there’s a way out!
LOL exactly!
This isn’t Dune, you can’t ride the worm!
But you should walk without rythm.. just in case
The scale of the game allows a convenient excuse of “You haven’t found it yet” by the developers. I don’t hate the devs or anything, I just think it’s funny how convenient that is to cover up for the criticisms and scepticism over the apparent lack of features/content some people were expecting.
Why was anyone expecting that though? I didn’t buy the game specifically because I was worried this would be the case. There was so little info about the real gameplay of this thing 🙁
How big is considered giant? I have seen some huge brachiosaur sized quadrapeds. A whole herd of them.
Ooh can I see? Any screenshots or links to pics?
I think people just want some form of guarantee that said creatures like the one in the article are in the game.
It would really suck if players were told after months of hardcore exploring that there is in fact no cool large creatures, would be a massive waste of time for everyone.
So I did not hear the hype about the giant snake… however last night i found a planet that i spent a few hours on. There were giant, completely round tunnels all over it. It passed my mind that it might be something more than just tunnels. I may have to back track to check it out in more detail now…. or at least get a video of the tunnels.