Elite Dangerous is massive. It’s so massive that it can be a bit overwhelming for new players. There are spaceships, pirates, massive floating bases, different roles, and tasks…the game is an enormous space simulator that basically renders a to-scale galaxy for you to explore. Since 2014, the game has received regular updates and DLC expansions.
Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is the latest expansion to Elite Dangerous. The DLC does something a bit unthinkable for a space simulator of this size: it takes the player out of space and dumps them, on foot, on any number of planets. Oh, and chucks in some FPS mechanics, as well.
Sounds great, although it’s quite clear that Odyssey is undercooked, underdone, basically raw, and should have spent at least a few more months in development. The DLC has had an evidently terrible launch. Over 3,000 reviewers on Steam have rated it as “Not Recommended.”
Where did it go wrong? First, the bugs. Despite two quick (ish) hot fixes, Odyssey is still buggy. Character movement is bizarre, the game often crashes while moving between the new weapon shops and menus, and even the big selling point of the DLC – the gunplay – sounds weird and has a bunch of glitchy animations.
More on that shooting. The mechanics are…odd. Everyone has a personal shield (which turns even simple fights into a possible grindfest), the weapons are all sort of useless, and the feedback from shooting, including the recoil patterns, is underwhelming.
Maybe it isn’t surprising that Frontier’s effort at integrating a fully-functioning FPS game into their space simulator has been a little bit off. They are, obviously, pretty different types of games.
But what’s upset the community so much is the fact this DLC costs full price. $40 dollars. 35 euros. That doesn’t matter whether you have the original Elite Dangerous pass. Nope. This is a standalone addition to the game.
Odyssey feels like it’s in a testing phase. But you have to pay to play it. There are problems with gun attachments, the new bio-exology role is tedious at best, and engineering has returned to a pretty dated system of having to completely change and upgrade the new weapons without being able to make any amendments. These are just a few of the problems.
The response has been pretty solid from the community. They are not happy. Frontier’s CEO recently released a statement via the Frontier forums they heard loud and clear and would continue to make changes.
Elite Dangerous has been under development for several years now, and for the most part, Frontier is quite good at making changes and running consistent content. As their flagship DLC for their game, which recently arrived fully-formed on consoles, it would serve them well to listen to their dedicated playerbase.
