About four years ago, developer Hello Games launched “Next,” an enormous free update for galaxy-spanning adventure No Man’s Sky that added more danger, resources, and bizarre alien creatures to the game’s sprawling universe. Things like the nightmare-inducing double squid, with 16 arms of inappropriate anime power. Fortunately for the universe, an alleged bug erased the squid from existence. Unfortunately, it looks like that bug has been fixed in the new Outlaws update. The squid is back.
This piece originally appeared on Kotaku Australia on April 27, 2022. It has been retimed as a weekend read.
The images in this post come from Redditor Dashboard-Devil, who’s been hunting for the elusive creature since running into it back in 2018 on their PlayStation 4 account.
“I had made a few posts over the years in different places to see if anyone remembered them or had seen them,” Dashboard-Devil said during a conversation on Reddit. The consensus was that the creatures had simply vanished with the end of the “Next” update event.
So imagine Dashboard-Devil’s surprise when the massive wiggly bastards, which he’s christened Hexadecapus, popped up in the middle of one of their most recent adventures.
“I gasped and blinked to make sure that I was seeing what I thought I saw,” said Dashboard-Devil. “Then I got really excited! I just sat and watched them for a moment. Taking a pic was difficult because of the multiplayer being on. I was so excited that it didn’t even dawn on me to turn it off.” I’d imagine that’s exactly how Captain Ahab felt when he finally confronted the white whale at the end of Moby Dick, which I might need to re-read soon.
Not only did Dashboard-Devil grab a few more screens while revisiting their squid friends a second time, they also managed to snag the creature’s collection page.
Seems like underwater creature generation has been bugged for a few years, which can happen in a game of such massive scale. We’ve reached out to Hello Games for more background on the issue, but for now we’re just glad the creepy buggers are back.
Want to see the critters yourself? Just dial your portal configurator to the correct coordinates. Save some squid cuddles for me.
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