Elite Dangerous Odyssey – New life in the old dog yet

For the past few weeks, since the initial release of the Alpha way back in the heady days of March, I’ve been spending a significant amount of time getting acquainted with the new expansion Elite Dangerous Odyssey. Thanks to the folks at Frontier Developments, I’ve been blasting, shooting and doing a little bit of flying through the expansion on PC.

I began my time with Odyssey on a PC running a 9th generation Intel I5 andGTX 1050, and during the Alpha this led to some, rather shaky experience. Since then I’ve moved on to a new rig running a Ryzen 5 with an RTX 3060. In addition, of course, the title has moved from Alpha to full release and while it’s certainly not be the smoothest ride, it’s one I’m still having a lot of fun with.

I’ve logged around 3,500 hours in Elite Dangerous over on Xbox One and Xbox Series X, and while it has continued to get regular play time among other favourites, the hours put in have certainly slowed in recent years. Odyssey has been a very welcome addition to the party, and while there are still some kinks for the folks at Frontier to work out, it’s certainly given my Elite gameplay a whole new lease of life.

For Odyssey I’ve started with an entirely new character on PC, wiping my previous save to begin as a lowly CMDR on foot. Getting used to being back to scraping my way through using Apex taxis and beginning with some really low-level data delivery missions has been relatively fun. Back on Xbox with a fairly significant fleet at my disposal, I typically don’t even get out of bed for under a million credits, so taking a step back to getting down among the nitty gritty has in itself been a fun experience, made all the more special by the new features in Odyssey.

To begin with, the simple awe of walking around, whether approaching your ship in a station or on the surface of a planet, I’ve found to be an intense experience. While the actual boarding of the ship can be break immersion, with a simple button click boarding instead of entering “properly”, walking around underneath your vessel gives an impressive sense of scale, and a good opportunity to get some selfies in as well.

One thing which was a nice surprise was the fact that planetfall is no longer only possible on airless planets and moons. Odyssey has also now allowed landing on thin-athomsphere bodies, which not only produces some incredible aesthetics, but has opened up a significant number of new landable planets which weren’t available previously. While we’re likely quite a way off from luscious vegetation and cityscapes (though with the COBRA Engine powering the Jurassic World Evolution series who knows if that’s far off) it was a little bonus which I wasn’t expecting.

Another touch which I’ve quite enjoyed is the “First Footfall” mechanic, which opens up yet another layer of “first discoveries” for players, outside discovery and mapping of the planet. While it might be seen as only a small step for man, as an explorer this genuinely feels a little like a much larger step for mankind, and the possibility of logging first footfall out in far-flung systems is actually quite enticing.

An additional string to the explorer’s bow is the new genetic sampling, which adds to the new Exobiology profession ladder. This provides an all-new Elite ranking system, alongside the new on-foot focused Mercenary ranking.

I’ve dabbled with all of the new features in Odyssey, and there are a good number of them, but I still can’t really decide which bit is my favourite. It’s probably settlement raids, which is likely where I’ve spent the brunt of my on-foot time in Odyssey, sneaking or shooting my way through settlements, cloning profiles to keep edging a little bit further with the thrill and excitement of the fact that because I am awful at first-person shooters, I might die at any time.

Odyssey has really provided a new lease of life for me with Elite Dangerous, and while I was still playing it really has revived my passion for the title. It can’t be ignored that there are people out there who are having difficulties, with frame rate and connection issues reported and some pretty serious issues acknowledged by Frontier. With even David Braben releasing an official statement you know it must be serious but, in honesty, I’ve not found any of these major problems within my gameplay.

I’ve since moved to playing in VR through the Oculus Quest 2 and while the lack of full VR immersion while on foot isn’t exactly outstanding (and it should be noted that Frontier have said there are no plans for Odyssey VR development at this time) use of the vanity camera to provide a VR-esque environment do seem to indicate that it is something which is possible within the coding. That said, nobody has come up with a truly good (and accessible for mass market) way to move in VR yet, so maybe we should wait a while anyway.

With the bugs, connection problems and frame rate “issues” all put together, I’d still say this is definitely one to look at. There’s just something about being on foot in this Elite Dangerous universe which causes me to stop and take stock and marvel at how far this game has come since the initial release. Even outside the large gameplay changes, improvement to planetary and on-ship visuals also mean that you even get benefits when you’re not on foot.

I’m very much looking forward to any improvements which Frontier bring, but in the meantime I’m off to raid another settlement and see if I can’t make me some money. Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.