Elite Dangerous: Odyssey takes players into new territory - but it proves a bumpy launch
One of the most celebrated games to come out of Cambridge - the space simulation Elite Dangerous - has boldly gone into new territory by allowing players to get out of their spaceships and explore on foot.
Frontier Developments, the independent Cambridge Science Park-based games developer and publisher, described the release of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey for PC on May 19 as the “start of a new era” - although CEO David Braben has since apologised to players after performance issues marred the launch.
From a first-person perspective, players visit newly-accessible planets, take on missions, engage in combat and trade, and can work either alone or as a team.
You get to choose your path - from adventurous explorer to callous bounty hunter - and access specialised space suits and tailored gear.
To play it, you’ll need the original Elite Dangerous, which has now been installed by 12 million players around the globe.
Mr Braben, who created the 1984 classic original Elite game with Ian Bell, after they met at Jesus College, said: “This is the next step in what has already been an incredible journey and labour of love with Elite Dangerous since the Kickstarter over eight years ago.
“The team have pulled off a fantastic achievement here across a mind-bending scale – from the detail within a human footprint to the vast distances across stellar systems and beyond is breathtaking, in a rich, detailed and accurate recreation of the Milky Way in one to one scale.
“For me it is not just the detailed exploration and combat, but the gothic beauty of watching stars, planets, moons, moons-of-moons rise and fall or slowly pirouette in their often complex paths in the night sky, while each tiny dot or nebula in that sky is really there and can be visited.”
The launch proved a bumpy ride, however, with some players complaining of performance problems, server outages and bug reports.
Writing on the Elite Dangerous forum on Monday, Mr Braben said: “I would like to apologise wholeheartedly to those who have been suffering from these problems. I would like to reassure you that we take these issues very seriously and that they are our top priority and focus.”
One hotfix was released, with another promised “very soon” to resolve the problems, along with other updates to “resolve more bugs and improve stability”.
Mr Braben added: “Some of our players are reporting poor performance on machines where we would expect the performance to be good, and others are saying it is fine. We are trying to get to the bottom of this.”
He added: "I would like to thank you all for your patience and support.”
The game is available for Windows PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store and FrontierStore.net, priced from £29.99, with releases on PlayStation4 and Xbox One planned for the autumn.
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