Friends!
This update introduces some NPCs in the form of fellow human crew members from the Mothership. There are some brief 'meet and greet' dialogs with some of the people who are living and working up in space while you set up things at the Outpost down on Syrinx, and there are also a couple of new missions you can do for them if you want help them out.
Behind the scenes, the engine used for the game was updated to a version three years ahead of the old version. This opens up a bunch of shiny new technology that can be used in the game (including the new dialog system the NPC's use), but also involved having to rework some old stuff that broke as part of the upgrade. In particular, most of the graphic shaders in the game had to be redone, and because of this much of the game art may look a bit nicer now. In particular, a buggy-looking 'orange glow' around objects in the starting area at night is gone, and ambient lighting works better with the game's day/night cycle.