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 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 realize 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 on 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’ve 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...
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 center 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.