Elite Dangerous will allow you to go exterior in Odyssey growth

The superior techology of Elite Dangerous‘s far future will lastly grant people the unattainable energy of legs, in response to information from Frontier Developments at present.

The house exploration and bwoomp simulator is getting a brand new growth early subsequent 12 months. It’s known as Odyssey, and it’s about getting out of your ship to jaunt about on foot on any planet you want. Well. Probably not the fuel giants.

The blurb is slightly bold, and emphasises a breadth of approaches: “play your way, from diplomacy and commerce to lethal stealth and all-out combat. Diverse settings, objectives, and NPCs offer endless mission variety and a near infinite amount of content to enjoy.”

Those are some grandiose claims certainly. I’ve solely really landed on a planet as soon as, as a result of it took a number of minutes to land and there was little or no to do as soon as I acquired there. That’s what you get for not planning forward. More ready pilots have been dropping little moon buggies from their ships and roving round planet surfaces for years, prospecting and retrieving goodies for missions, however this replace guarantees to make the rocks far more partaking. There’ll be first-person fight too, in “a multi-layered, deep, tactical environment”, though it’s not clear in opposition to who, or on what sort of scale.

Players have lengthy suspected that planetary walkabouts can be a part of the massive updates they’ve been anticipating in 2021, about which Frontier have been fairly reticent till now. Players have additionally been crucial (and I lately was myself) of how solitary it could possibly really feel. Odyssey will apparently provide social hubs for organising joint planetary expeditions, and tie collectively ships, land autos, and massive stompy explorer boots, which I can see working if it’s dealt with proper.

I’m curious to see how a lot freedom there’ll be in strolling round, and the way effectively it connects to the whole lot else. ED’s cockpit and station interiors are nice, however I by no means fairly felt absolutely related to its world when completely glued to my chair. A bit extra of a way of being an precise individual might do quite a bit to totally exploit a number of issues the game does effectively. Merging shippy spaceflight bits with floor bits is a tall order although, with plenty of potential for going improper. But it’s additionally a kind of large dream ideas that numerous house followers all the time clamour for. High stakes certainly.

You can add Elite Dangerous: Odyssey to your wishlist on Steam now. It’s due out in early 2021.

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