Revisiting the original No Man's Sky, 10 years on - and why it was always good in its own way

"Commencing Atlus suit initialisation system", crackles a synthesised female voice from out of my TV screen. "Life support systems activated", she continues. And eventually, "User initialisation sequence complete". It's a start-up sequence I've heard countless times over the last decade, but today things are a little bit different. As No Man's Sky celebrates its 10th anniversary, I've slung myself back through a wormhole of sorts - one powered by a dusty PS4 wrenched from a box in the attic and an original disc copy of the game procured for £8.

This, you see, is the No Man's Sky of 2016; that familiar synthesised voice an echo from the past. I'm playing a version of developer Hello Games' exploratory space sim that's at once distantly remembered and largely forgotten, all my original recollections having been slowly usurped by new ones amid the astonishing 45+ major updates No Man's Sky has received over the last 10 years. But, in a moment of sudden wistfulness these kinds of big anniversaries tend to bring, I found myself with a curious urge to return to where it all began.

It's impossible not to acknowledge that No Man's Sky's launch was a controversial one. But when I first fired it up in August 2016, it was - having barely followed its progress since that curiosity-piquing first trailer some three years prior - with virtually no expectations. You could take off in a spaceship, was about all I'd gathered, then seamlessly land somewhere new.

And I loved it, losing countless hours to the pleasantly unhurried rhythms of its freeform exploration. Wide-eyed in a universe that felt strange, slightly haunted, but also somehow comforting in its blanket of perpetual solitude. And I've still got the hundreds of screenshots commemorating my journey from that time: images of strange obelisks spearing frozen tundra; curious rocks winding wormlike against a distant backdrop of desert mesa; floating islands, curious creatures, and other alien wonders borne from the game's procedural generation. There I was, snapping away, like a giddy tourist at the end of everything.

Admittedly, the novelty eventually wore off, perhaps sooner than I can recall. But then came No Man's Sky's Foundation Update just a few months later, and - with its freighters, its base building, its farming - I was straight back in. It was the first small hint at No Man's Sky's decade of seismic evolution to come, and I've been a frequent visitor to Hello Games' perpetually doomed universe ever since then. But 10 years and dozens upon dozens of transformative updates later, I think I was expecting to be underwhelmed or disappointed when I loaded up the No Man's Sky of 2016 and - "Commencing Atlus suit initialisation system" - jumped back in.

It's true, of course, that the No Man's Sky of today is very different to the one of 10 years ago. And returning to the original, there's plenty about it - the excessive inventory management, the maddeningly cumbersome UI, for instance - I'm more than happy to have forgotten. But even so, even without the decade of refinements and additions, there remains something magical about that original vision: a No Man's Sky built around transience and perpetual forward momentum, where the joy was in the discovery of ephemeral sights soon forgotten along an endless path to nowhere in particular. And where the lingering question, as I've written previously, always seemed to be 'Where next?' rather than the 'What now?' of today.

Gazing again upon the universe as it was 10 years ago, I've been surprised by how striking it still looks too; its psychedelic landscapes maybe even more exotic, even more alien. And its buildings, its machinery, rendered in an art style that - as much as I appreciate all the new technological bells and whistles of modern-day No Man's Sky - perhaps better captures the spirit of Chris Foss, John Harris, and the game's original retro-futuristic inspirations.

The No Man's Sky of 2016, with its leisurely, loosely structured meanderings felt like the very epitome of 'the journey not the destination'; a game for the wanderers, the perpetually curious, those beguiled by the promise that - even amid the fiddly busywork, the sometimes tedious survival, and the increasingly obvious limitations of the procedural generation - somewhere out there lay the perfect planet to call, however briefly, home. It's hardly a surprise this strange, plodding creation was a divisive one. But as I took my first steps back into the past this week - free of the decade's distractions, and with only the thrill of a new horizon to spur me on - I felt the tiniest tinge of sadness that this purity of spirit was long gone.

It's a funny feeling too, revisiting No Man's Sky's original universe and surveying a landscape that, with the foreknowledge of a time-traveller, doesn't so much feel empty as expectant; a canvas primed for the years to come. And what a decade it's been. As much as I've enjoyed my trip to the past, I don't think I could trade that original version for the one we have now.

True, it's a different sort of thing these days; less aloof and more like an intergalactic life-sim, asking that 'What now?' and 'Who do you want to be today?' each time you log on. Yes, that gentle traipsing and languid laser-pointing remains at the heart of it all, but now you're not just a wanderer. You're a pirate, a property magnate, a trader, a scavenger, an archaeologist, a fisher, a museum curator, an animal trainer, an outpost overseer, and a whole lot more. And with the advent of multiplayer, the ever-bustling Space Anomaly, and those sometimes even busier Expeditions, it's a universe where - even in its most distant corners, its ocean planets and anomalous regions - the eerie solitude of 2016 is only fleeting and it's rare to feel truly alone.

But I'm okay with that. The No Man's Sky of today is - after a decade of ceaseless, boundless, delightful unpredictability - a wonderfully weird sandbox; a stranger, darker, spikier sort of Everything Game. And for a universe perpetually on the edge of destruction - 16, 16, 16, and all that - it's a remarkably joyful one, centred around an enthusiastic community of explorers, builders, ship designers that might well be one of the loveliest in gaming. All of them making the most of the moments before the end of a universe that must eventually - surely - come.

But 10 years on, as No Man's Sky's perpetual 16-minute countdown to destruction ticks imperceptibly onward, the end hasn't come. And, in fact, there's more life here than ever before. Of course, with Light No Fire on the way, who knows what the future will bring as Hello Games ventures toward newer procedural horizons. But for now, as the studio likes to say, No Man's Sky's journey continues. And long may it do so.