Elite Dangerous: Odyssey
The people have come in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey
Milling about at a star port, you can do a bit of shopping and take on missions from people looking to delegate.
What if, right after looting yet another ancient treasure, you played as Lara Croft restoring each piece individually? That’s the kind of massive shift this expansion represents for Elite Dangerous, allowing players to finally get out of their spaceships to stretch their legs.
You won’t just get a handful of planets to choose from, either: light years upon light years will be covered. Our hands-on with the alpha only covers Adityan, but that’s huge in and of itself (the game features “400 billion star systems” after all). Milling about at a star port, you can do a bit of shopping and take on missions from people looking to delegate.
SHUTTLE BUG
The addition of on-foot exploration and FPS shooting doesn’t suddenly turn Elite into Call Of Duty, however. After taking on a mission, you’ll still need to spend a while travelling towards it, perhaps taking a shuttle from Apex for a handful of credits. You’ll just be sitting there with nothing to do watching the stars go by. But that’s Elite through and through.
As is the difficulty we face after accidentally alerting everyone when we take on an assassination mission. Everyone is armed and gunning for us, and hacking our way in takes skill. Lesson learned, we spend a while going back and forth fetching things like an interstellar delivery driver, erm, pilot – less exciting than the assassin life, but safer. It’s early days, but this very Elite take on exploration feels like a natural fit. Walk planetside when Elite Dangerous: Odyssey hits PlayStation later in 2021.