♪ Vigilante: Second Offence! ♪ Who-o-OAH! After many years of playing it on and off, and not knowing what to make of it, the time has come to finally talk about “Elite: Dangerous”. However, most of what you’ll see here will be recent footage. The game has had changes over the years, and some of the old footage is… different. TRANSMISSION: “Excuse me, boy, but you violated the NAP.” So we’ll move past all of that and talk about the game as it is now. That will include the “Horizons” expansion. Usually, I try to talk about the base game and the expansions separately, but this time it’s so integrated that I don’t know how to do it separately. It will be easier than picking apart what’s in what. So let’s get started. “Elite: Dangerous” is a space sim, set about 1300 years in the future. In this future, killing the innocent is okay, as long as you pay a fine, and killing less innocent or evil fine debters gets you the money. SYSTEM: “Target destroyed.” You don’t have to shoot people in the face, because there are a lot of other things to do. And there is literally a lot of space to do it, because the game takes place in a 1:1 scale of our galaxy. So, if you want, you can go and visit any of the game’s 400 000 000 000 star systems. According to the developers last April, the playerbase has mapped out about 0.036% of the galaxy. So, if you’re worried about not finding new things, there’s still about 50 000 years or so to go. This universe is run by their servers, so there’s no offline mode. However, playing solo or in the MMO universe with other players will still affect the same galaxy. We’ll talk more about that in a bit. For now, I wanna focus on the presentation. Because, visually, “Elite” looks great! It’s hard to believe it came out back in 2014. The lighting, reflection and shadows are really impressive. Seeing a star glare off your cockpit and shadows move across your dashboard is one thing. Seeing it happen across an entire planet’s ice ring is quite another. Whether it’s space phenomena, something manmade, or a little bit of both – the realism approach makes it all interesting to look at. This goes doubly for all the ships in the game. They’ve added a bunch over the years, so there’s a large amount of variety. These ships are also hugely customizable. There are paint schemes, dashboard items, weapon colors – it really just goes on. Same goes for your rover or character, if you want to make a space DarksydePhil or something. There ARE microtransactions, and, unfortunately, I think they fall on the steeper side. The good news is: currently, they’re the only thing you could buy with money – no gameplay advantages – and you can earn the currency just by playing the game, and never have to pay anything. But there is a weekly cap on it, so it might still take you a month just to get a paint skin. It is nice to have the option of just playing the game to get them, because most games don’t do that now. It’s a long lost fight… I guess this is fine. Beyond that, the level of detail these ships have is insane. These are the most detailed and gorgeous ships that I’ve seen in a released game. RELEASED game! Don’t you start! I wonder what year that joke will actually age in…? Anyway, ships are cool, space is weird and planets are planets. The visuals set a really high bar, but here’s the thing: the game sounds even better. [rising humming] [rising humming]
SYSTEM: “Four, three, two, one… Engage.” [sharp dive into muted hum] [tense humming of the engine, sharp sounds of weapons, hectic chirping of the dashboard] [tense humming of the engine, sharp sounds of weapons, hectic chirping of the dashboard]
SYSTEM: “Target destroyed.” [quieting humming of the engine] TRANSMISSION: “Good shooting, Сommander!” [quiet echoes of blast charges] [booming explosion] [chirping of sensors] [crackling of cockpit glass] [abrupt silencing of almost all sounds, past hissing of escaping air] [abrupt silencing of almost all sounds, past hissing of escaping air]
SYSTEM: “Cabin pressure alert!” [sound of breathing inside the space suit] SYSTEM: “Atmospheric failure!” This is one of the best sounding games I’ve ever played. The quality of the sound, the variety, the mixing of it – it’s all just… perfect! Like Italian chef kiss. *M’wah!* It has to be heard to be believed. Ships can range from sounding like a World War II biplane to just… “Star Wars”. The menus have a shuddering sound that remind me of “Alien”. [shuddering sound, reminiscent of "Alien"] I’ve had friends with VR headsets telling me that this game becomes transcendent with one. And you know what? I can completely believe that. “Elite” just knocks it out of the park when it comes to presentation. For whatever reason, I always feel like I’m playing a “Dead Space” game. Probably due to all the barren planets, the orange holographic menus, the computer voice and evil companies. It could also be the terror from beyond the stars, but let’s not go there yet. When it comes to the gameplay, one of the first things you’ll likely do is adjust the controls. It is easier to use a flight stick or HOTAS, but I had no problem with the mouse and keyboard too. When you see that controls menu is as long as a CVS receipt, you might get worried, but it’s not too bad. They recently added a bunch of new tools and tutorials, that you can access at any time. This makes the learning curve not nearly as daunting as a lot of other space sims. Trust me, it could get really dull out there. The game is easy and smooth to control. It mainly plays more like a space plane, so you’ll be at home if you’re used to traditional flight games. You could also flip off controls to move it exactly like a space ship: maintain fast momentum in one direction, but turn around to face another, like if you’re being chased by somebody. Or you just wanna gently float by an asteroid field, scanning for goodies, but don’t wanna keep flying through all of it. Flying is fun, and it’s cool to see how different ships, or even different parts can change the handling. Docking can be tricky, if you’re new to the game, or just haven’t played in a long time. Then again, maybe you bought a ship that’s much bigger and slower than you’re used to. DIMITRI: “Too fast, too fast! Full reverse!” MANDALORE: “NonononoNONONO…!” The same goes to super cruise travelling throughout a star system. I don’t have footage of it, but when I first started the game years ago, I would keep boomeranging around the system, cause I couldn’t time it just right. I mean, yeah, you could keep it in the blue, but that takes forever. If you were tormented by this, they added an item earlier this year to help you with that. Just let the ship do it and look around at all the pretty sights. But you might have to wait in the queue if you do that. You have to remember, this is a British game developer. Yeah, don’t use that if you know what you’re doing. The ships have solid controls, and if you don’t feel fast enough, just put more power in your engines. That’s just on the move, because, of course, if you wanna st- OUGH! [gaudy horn]
That’s just on the move, because, of course, if you wanna st- OUGH! Christ, what a dick! KID KREAL: “Hey, let me drive, you almost hit that guy!” KREAL: “We’re fine, don’t worry about it!” KREAL: “We just gotta find Mandalore, force him to let us be in his video, and then our careers will be smooth sailing, I’m telling you!” KID KREAL: “He doesn’t want us in the video, dude…” KREAL: “Yes he does! He just didn’t… tell me where he parked his space ship…” KID KREAL: “Oh, I’m sure…” KREAL: “Shut up, Kid Kreal.” There’s an extensive amount of ship customizing when it comes to parts. Your ship could be set up as a warfighter, a miner, an explorer, or a jack of all trades. Anyone can lob a missile at you in space. It goes even deeper than that, because each part might have different sizes and classes. You could put the best stuff on, but they might be heavier and need more power. One part might be cheap and less efficient, but it’s a lot lighter, so your ship is more maneuverable and can jump farther. What about weapons? Fixed ones are more reliable, but you have to maneuver carefully to line them up. So there’s a consideration of putting on nothing but gimballed weapons, which will automatically track your target. No more having to line them up all the time, right? Well, they might not hit as well. Especially when the other ship starts electronically jamming them. So there is a lot to consider, and you can spend a long time planning out your ship build. Some ships can fit a fighter hangar, and you can have an NPC fly it, or fly it yourself. If you want to explore, do you wanna bring rovers along to land on planets? How many should you have? It will be a long trip – might wanna repair module for our ship and maybe a fuel scoop for going by stars, and it… it just spirals from there. You can fit a ship out for anything you want. “Elite” hopes you like this part. A lot. After all, this is a game I’ve played on and off. Not something I’ve sunk thousands of hours into, even though it looks like the kind of thing that I would. As open and “do whatever you want” the game claims to be, it still has too much of a stranglehold. Let me explain it with a few stories. On my most recent return to the game, I decided to start out by hauling cargo. It’s a good money-maker, and it’s not that risky, unless you take up dangerous mission, or go into a bad part of town. So I did some cargo missions, which did not pay a lot, but it was making way more than combat in the area did. Eventually, I decided I would just sell whatever I wanted. But the market info was pathetic – only showing places I had docked at before, and not all of them. In fact, there were barely any market search tools at all. “EVE Online” has had a tool like this forever, so it was odd to me that “Elite” didn’t have anything like this, but as it turns out – it does. There are multiple third party tools on the internet for it. Even for something as simple as buying a ship. I could search here, or dock in stations in game with an economy that I think MIGHT have the ship I’m looking for. So I see some promising stuff – buy low, sell high, sell higher – and the trip is right next door. But I notice in the market some materials that sell really high in the same station, and, apparently, you need to mine them. Not good old laser mining either. It would be more complex to really move up. So I got a long-range exploration and mining ship. After exploring and nearly getting a pulsar fire, I found a nice system. I look to the planets, probe some rings, and A-HA – the money spot! So I set course. When I got there, a local checked me out, and them he left as quickly as he came. So I was free to do whatever. Then I had to scan the asteroids. They don’t always change to an obvious color to tell you that they have what you’re looking for, so it’s something I had to learn. Then I found one with a fissure on it, which means there’s something good inside, and I launched a special drone to see what else was in the rock. More fissures! So I had to launch seismic probes into them, and also keep them balanced, to make sure that the rock didn’t blow up too much, because I don’t want to blow up everything inside of it. They were also on a timer, so I barely got out of range before it exploded. Now the rocks are free to be collected by the drones and mined by me. Near 200k a pop! 2-3 of those are an easy cargo run! I got more. They’re worth more than 200k. Much more. So I went back, and while the drones were collecting up the money, I went back to that web site. The station I went to was low-balling me. I had a better idea of what I was doing now. For reference, the missions in the area have been paying me a few hundred thousand – maybe a few million – per run, which... You know… That was after expenses. Endgame ships are well worth over 100 000 000, so that all made sense. In my second ever mining run, I went to the station that paid high… and made 170 000 000 credits. Wut? I remembered playing for weeks and weeks back in the day, and coming nowhere close to that. I had to tell Dimitri and bring him along. DIMITRI: “This is the USS “Thundercock”, we are requesting permission to dock.” Yeah, you can multi-crew your spacecraft. That’s awesome. Two sets of eyes means a better chance of getting a promising asteroid. He could also be the gunner to loosen the diamonds, while I maneuvered around the rocks. It worked wonderfully. DIMITRI: “Take cover, it’s gonna blow!” [*BEWM*] So then we returned back to station, ready to get rich again. To test it, I only sold some. The game decided he earned 5% of my income. There’s no “give money” button. Okay, where do I start? “Elite” has a huge galaxy with all these factions, but… how different are they? STATION: “It’s good to see you, Commander! Please, enjoy your stay at this facility.” STATION: “Access approved. Make your way to landing pad 1-3.” SSTATION: “Permission granted to come inside me.” STATION: “Okay, Commander, your assigned landing pad is number 3-5.” When universe is this big, a lot left to be procedural. In fact, MOST is procedural. All the missions and writing – it’s essentially Cleverbot. Names change, locations flip, but it becomes horribly familiar, and quick. Sometimes, developers can hide this, but this is so blatant that there’s no hiding it. In order to complete your mission, you must choose a reward. It will be money or a material I need, because who cares about the station? Go ahead and cross the universe – it will be the same thing. There’s conflict across universe, systems change hands, you could pledge your loyalty to any of them. And it doesn’t matter. You could look at the huge map, showing the giant three powers fighting for control, and I just think of the one from 1984. It doesn’t matter who wins – it’ll just be the same thing. This is a big hurdle to investment, because they RULE the galaxy. They create all the ship parts, they create all the space ships. That’s really what it decides: where you can buy things, where you can sell things. Most stuff will be accepted everywhere, but there are some exceptions. I know a lot of missions in an MMO will have, like, some fluff text that someone skips through, but you can still read that if you want. It might be a little different, depending on the faction, might talk about some stuff going on in the world and not just say “go collect 5 leaves” or whatever it is. This is nothing. The economy is improved for the big ball of nothing. “Rank up and you can fly one of our ships”, and that’s it. Now, let me be fair: “EVE Online” is also weaker here. But faction wars unlock all sorts of things beyond just ships. Even missions – which I think are some of the weakest parts in that game – still look like they are written by a human being. Even follow-up missions aren’t just… random. You have tools to find the missions that they really put effort into the story. But “EVE” is built around player interactions, so this is all just background stuff, really. In “Elite: Dangerous”, you’re the background. If everyone stopped playing “Elite” right now, the wars would continue, systems would still change hands, and everything would be very “business as usual”. If everyone trickled out of “EVE” until it was empty (any day now, honestly…), the markets would just have NPC things, and the player structures would be gone, and it’s just like no one was ever here. That’s the world of this game: “You can fly a space ship with multiple friends, but you can’t decide how much money to split.” “We’ll figure that out for you, don’t break the simulation.” Well, he got his fair split – I just had to go up to him and tediously jettison out my cargo for him to scoop up. That alone is really a microcosm of my issues with it. Whenever I hear a story about some player doing something nuts in “Elite: Dangerous”, it’s usually IN SPITE of the game’s mechanics. For example, let’s say three powers are fighting in a community event, and each side has to bring a certain amount of materials to a station. A group might organize a blockade and do protection runs – all this neat stuff to fight other players, but then the winner ends up being a completely different faction. The ones who went all solo, and didn’t have to deal with any of that, and just ferried all their stuff over with no problem. Remember: always online/same universe. You have multiple ways of getting materials and resources and parts. Imagine if you could make your own ships, or weapons, or maybe even like a space outpost or a mining colony on a planet? Something to leave a mark, and a money sink that’s not just your space ship. What if YOU put out missions for other players to bring you materials? Build something together, instead of for… whoever this is. Your imagination can really run wild from here. But this is a game with no “give friend money” button. That’s where we are. The big endgame grind is going to special engineers to upgrade your ship even more. This means collecting tons of different materials just to make your ship that much better at… whatever it does. Space sims rarely have just the ship as a money sink. Even if it is, usually it gets something like a great story, or seeing your impact on the universe. They’re also not so weirdly stingy about player tools. I mean, imagine “Mount & Blade”, but you could only upgrade your character. You can’t invest into your own enterprises or overthrow an area for yourself, you can’t conspire with NPCs or have your army of underlings. It’s not that bad, but it came to mind. The most interesting missions in “Elite” were the stuff I just came across, but those also got repetitive. It’s a shame, because you could have something cool happen out he- [rattling, screeching wail] I have another story. After my too close encounter, I wanted to find more about the strange aliens called the Thargoids. I didn’t want to look up a wiki or anything, so a friend just pointed me towards a certain nebula out in space. I hadn’t been too far out of the bubble before, but I decided to give it a try. I avoided their ship sites, but I kept scanning planets until, eventually, I found something. I had zero idea of what to expect, but I took the ship down. That was the point I realized that this was feeling more like a horror game. What is this Giger anthill out in the middle of nowhere? I could get closer… SYSTEM: “Low gravity warning.” And off I went. A lot of “Elite” is mind-numbing travelling, but I was entranced at this point. What was this for? Was there anything I could do here, or was supposed to? When I moved down the ridge and saw… something… moving, it was genuinely scary, but also, like, an actual discovery. The map showed another player had scanned this place out, but did he actually land down here? I don’t know. What ARE these things? Wait… That one’s coming towards me. It’s not… hostile, but… I’m still not comfortable. I thought they might be tending to the strange organic structures outside the big anthill, but I don’t know. I ended up breaking one and collecting materials that I hadn’t seen before. These things are like farmers, I guess. I had no clue. I scanned what I could and got ready to get out. But what were behind the doors? Would they, like, open up somehow if I made them mad? Well, they had free stuff lying around, so I grabbed that up to bring it on the ship. Oh, it’s horrifically corrosive. Of course it is… So much for that. I still felt weird, even when I left. While looking for mining sites later, I ended up finding another one. It looked similar, but this planet was near pitch black. I found new information, but the mystery was deepening. What is it all for? Why is it here? Once again, the planet was marked, but was I the first one to land here? Could I be the only person to have ever come? But then I realized that someone left all their garbage from a “Melty Blood” tournament here, so I guess not… Anyway, even though the ship was built for exploration, I ended up fighting a few of their scouts at one point. It was then I learned that their special breed of acid was also on their weapons, and I nearly died from the fight, until I flew by a sun to burn it off. So that was a rough fight. When I reached one of the few stations out here, fully aware of the alien threat, it had… all the same missions as the other stations. But I was back on the trail of… something. I decided to brave one of the more dangerous signals I saw. I figured out that, if I jettisoned some of the material I found in their worlds, they would usually be okay with me. I just hadn’t gone to their territory to try this. [resonating screeching] Alright. I snatched up a probe I hadn’t seen before and decided to leave the system entirely. You can be caught inside a system, but never moving between them. I thought that for a long time. I was wrong. [rising hum] [rising hum]
SYSTEM: “Energy surge detected!” [rising hum] [sonorous horn] [approaching alien warbling] [metallic screeching] [pan-galactic gargle blasting] I later learned that I had fulfilled basically every criteria for them to murder me, but… they didn’t. Did I get points with them for sharing resources? Was I just lucky? I have no idea. After ripping me out and checking me out, they just let me go. Maybe the probe was like an IFF thing? Maybe it would open the door? And it did! And I was glad, because I was constantly repairing the ship, trying to keep the thing in the cargo hold, since it was also acidic. One of the missions I did pick up was to find four rare pieces of their technology, which were inside the base. I didn’t know if I could even bring it back that far, with the acid and all of that, but I picked it up anyway. The aliens feel genuinely alien. And for my issues with it, I don’t know if they would be as effective, if it wasn’t for the scale the game has. I still think players desperately need more tools and some additional money sink areas. You could do interesting things with the scale of this game as a backdrop to it. This ended up being anticlimactic, and I eventually found out that I didn’t have everything I needed to make something happen. Still, the game became captivating from this for a while. I was excited to see just how far I can go in it. As for how lucrative it was… The alien mission only paid 2 million – the price of a single rock I would find out in the field. The alien stuff I found is mainly used for just killing aliens, and apparently, whatever has been going on with them has been stagnant for a few years now. Apparently, I was supposed to shoot all the aliens, so I’m a big dummy. Man, “Elite: Dangerous”… Even now, I still get the Early Access feeling playing this game. I always think “Wow, it has so much potential!” Don’t get me wrong: it’s on sale for $7 right now, and that’s well worth it. If you like relaxed trucking games, then it’s also a perfect game for that. All the combat an exploration mechanics are fun, but… it’s just… everything else around it. There were so many moments of greatness in it, but there’s so much… nothing. I guess it’s hard, because I wanna like this game a lot more than I do. I still like to play it in bursts every so often. I’ll keep an eye on it, I’ll keep seeing what TheYamiks says about it, because I know I’ll be playing it again, and I know that they’re adding carriers in the near future, and that could be a start of something really great. If you like the genre, you might love this game. I just can’t get that into it for now. This game could have a great future. As for “EVE” – it’s not looking so good. But that’s another story… There will be some alien shooting games to make up for the lack of it here. I’ll see you then! It was never gonna be a 3 hour breakdown. It was just a few years of me going “Eh?” Anyway, on the questions! Supreme being Todd Howard: “How do you feel about being one of the main factors in the rise of “Pathologic” content?” I don’t think I’m a main factor, but it’s nice to see it talked about more. You can always vote for it in the “Story Award” for the Steam competition thing going on now. Marksnus: “Chance of a “Battle Realms” video after it comes out on Steam?” Depends on what they do. I don’t know. Maybe… Andrew Boyce: “Any plans to review “Half-Life: Alyx”?” I don’t have any VR thing, and the Valve Index looks pricey. I could try “Elite” in VR if I did though, but I don’t know, I’m… I’m not jumping at it. The Alphaant: “Do you ever revisit a game you reviewed with a changed opinion?” Mostly only if the game changed. “EVE Online” is very different than the video I did a few years ago, and it’s… not for the better. I don’t even know what to do about it. cptwad: “Now that “Elite” is over, what’s the next White Whale?” “Total War: Warhammer”. Long story short: I installed “Witch Hunt” a few weeks ago, and my PC really hasn’t been the same since, so I wanna make sure everything’s all looked at, because there could be something wrong with it, and I don’t wanna go too ham on a big video yet. Alrighty, I’ll see you next time! [thargasm]
Elite + VR + HOTAS is pretty god damn fantastic.
Now if they could imrove the weak points in this game it would be even better.
that song is in vigilante 8 2 second offense. I know this because I found my Sega Dreamcast yesterday and turned it on.
The game has a lot of shortcomings, but its flying engine is solid. The simulation of the galaxy is as expected huge, but empty. After 100 hrs every star looks the same, every planet is just another rotating sphere. I've heard that the VR experience is amazing, but again, it will get boring after a while. I used to play it, after overcoming the huge steep learning curve I was amazed with space. No other game makes you realize how HUGE distances in space are and how empty it really is. Yet, for all that wonder, the game relies in some very repetitive game mechanics and RNG. It even forces you to engage on some activities for a month just so you could buy one of the end game ships. There is nothing in the game that is skill based that really matters. The only area would be the thargoids alien race and after being introduced with mystery and a lot of foreboding, nothing really came out of it. If you find the game on sale and have VR, I would recommend for the wow factor, but I can't recommend this game as a real game. It makes gaming feel like work in the worst way.
As someone who doesn't keep up with EVE, can someone explain why he's saying the future of it doesn't look too bright?
Also, it's a shame the co-op aspects of the game don't seem too fleshed out. This game seems like it would be fun to explore with a friend.
ED is the most disappointing game I have ever played. At first it's awesome but as soon as you get comfortable with it and want to accomplish something it just sucks the soul right out of you.
Brah, going from Denny's to uninhabited plantes. The future of the Melty Blood community is looking pretty bright.
Permission granted: to come inside me @12:10
Man i can see why he's raving about the sound effects. Those alien sounds are goddamn delicious. Major props to the sound artists.
Everything about this review is painfully correct.
Including TheYamiks just existing.
...I like their content.