Enlarge / No Man’s Sky has already improved thanks to its last two patches. What exactly will this week’s portal-loaded update bring to the game? How will the added plot elements play out? (credit: Hello Games)

No Man’s Sky has seemingly survived one of the most uneven video game launches in recent history, and its reputation has slowly recovered thanks to a series of content-loaded patches. But none of those patches has been preceded by as much hype as the “Atlas Rises” update, which finally has a release window: this week.

Hello Games founder Sean Murray announced the patch’s launch in an e-mail to fans on Tuesday, and it confirms what the game’s “Waking Titan” alternate-reality game (ARG) hinted at: a new “quick-travel portal” system and an expanded, updated story. (These two changes may combine to make the game’s enormous, procedurally generated universe feel a little more interconnected.) This “version 1.3” update will be free for all No Man’s Sky game owners on both PC and PlayStation 4. Murray did not confirm whether the patch will land on the same day for both platforms.

This patch follows a base-building “foundation” update in November of last year and a car-loaded “path finder” update from this March. As with the other patches, we expect version 1.3 to add additional smaller-scale updates and tweaks beyond the major, headline-grabbing updates. We’ll update this report with more information on the patch as soon as its release notes are published, which Murray says will accompany the patch.