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The next expansion for Elite Dangerous is Odyssey, which adds first-person shootybangs to Frontier’s galaxy-sized space simulation. We already knew that, but now Frontier has announced that the expansion’s alpha will kick off on March 29, and there’s some extremely stiff play below.
I have a soft spot for those marketing videos that function like LARP gamers, in which the developers take on the roles of the most serious and engaged gamers they can imagine. The video above is filled with hairy-faced chatter as three players enter a compound, sneak past guards, hack a building, and grab a reactor before running away to their ship for a jaunt.
It’s totally different from how the vast majority of gamers will talk when completing these missions themselves, but hey, that tries to sell the flavor of the thing no matter what. More of a problem is that it serves here to highlight a lot of the awkwardness present in the unfinished version they’re playing. For example, they “sneak” past guards who seem completely obscure and oblivious. When combat does break out, they make a great deal of being seemingly overwhelmed, while enemies usually hesitate in front of them, in the open, without retaliating.
This is alpha footage released before an alpha release, so of course it’s unfinished. The basics of it remain impressive. Elite Dangerous has long since gone from a game that stuck you in a cockpit to a game that allowed you to move around ships, walk, and drive on planets. That this is now also a game where you can have combat on foot and combat on foot can interact with the scale world of a spaceship surrounding it is remarkable. This is what EVE Online dreamed of years ago, and Star Citizen continues to dream.
Elite Dangerous: Odyssey hits alpha for those who buy it on March 29, and aims for a final release later this spring.
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