Nice Things About Beyond

No More Stacks

Before Beyond, your inventory slots could hold up to 250 units of something. More than 250 units would take up an additional inventory slot. Now each slot can hold up to 10,000 units, so now each element will only take up one slot in your inventory. Pretty nice for the early stages, where inventory slots are dear. I wonder what it will look like in the later game, when you have a ton of slots.

Moveable Technology

You can now move technology upgrades around within your inventory. When two similar upgrades are placed next to each other, they give each other a synergy bonus, and now you can move them around at no cost. Before, once you installed the upgrade, it was set in that position until you destroyed it.

New Ship Models

I think this was implemented for VR, and it’s really subtle, but my ship is just slightly bigger. It’s not much, but it’s noticeable, especially after the number of hours that I’ve spent with the ship. It looks nicer, too, and the new cockpit and canopy animations are really nice. Also, when aliens land their ships at trading posts or stations, they now get out and stand in front of their ships. A little thing, but cool.

The Newish, More Unified Story

Before, the story was an afterthought, and clearly a tutorial on how to do certain things that were added to the game. Now, the story feels more cohesive. The different quest lines feel a little more blended together. And while it is still a tutorial, it’s a good tutorial that gets all the new things to you pretty quickly. There really is kind of an art to video game in-game tutorials, isn’t there?

Sitting!

Though I was sad to note that it wasn’t implemented throughout. There are still chairs whose actions are “CHAIR”, and activating them causes them to spin around.