Elite Dangerous’s next expansion is Odyssey, which is adding first-person shootybangs to the Frontier galaxy-sized space simulator. We already knew that, but now Frontier has announced that the expansion’s alpha will begin on March 29, and there is an extremely rigid-looking playthrough below.
I have a thing for these marketing videos that act as player LARPs, in which developers play the most serious and engaged players they can imagine. The video above is full of small talk as three players break into a complex, sneak past some guards, break into a building and grab a reactor before fleeing back to their ship for an escape.
It’s totally different from how the vast majority of players will talk while doing these missions themselves, but hey, it’s trying to sell the flavor of the thing, so whatever. More problematic is that it serves here to highlight much of the strangeness present in the unfinished version that they are playing. For example, they “sneak” past guards who seem completely obscure and oblivious. When combat begins, they attach great importance to the fact that they are apparently oppressed, while enemies almost always falter in front of them, in the open air, without firing back.
This is an alpha footage released before an alpha release, so of course it’s unfinished. The basics remain impressive. Elite Dangerous has long since been transformed from a game that stuck you in a cockpit to a game that allows you to move on ships, walk and drive on planets. That it is now also a game where you can have a foot combat and that the foot combat can interact with the world on a spacecraft scale around is remarkable. This is what EVE Online dreamed of years ago, and Star Citizen continues to dream.
Elite Dangerous: Odyssey hits the alpha for those who buy it on March 29, and aims for a final release later this spring.