 The Odyssey Alpha test is at last with us and finally the Elite Dangerous Playerbase gets their first tentative sample of what Frontier's vision for boots on the ground gameplay in the Elite universe should be. In this video we're going to spell out what we know about that vision, where it leaves us right now and what the future may hold. If you enjoyed this video hit like and subscribe and remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications as that stuff really helps the channel. If you'd like to further support our work you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. We're at an interesting and slightly terrifying juncture for the life of Elite Dangerous, for Frontier's hopes for their flagship product and for the playerbase's expectations for a game that many have quite a passionate sense of ownership about. It's the point when Frontier's vision meets head on with a player's passion and expectations. That vision at Frontier has already had to pass through a filter inside the company made up of design decisions, available manpower and both technical and fiscal reality. So what is Frontier's vision for what they're calling the biggest expansion that Elite Dangerous has ever had? Recently we were fortunate enough to be invited along with a huge sway of other content creators to an online presentation by Frontier about Odyssey. We didn't see any gameplay at the presentation and it wasn't really a content reveal either, what we did see however was a small glimpse of the design ethos behind Odyssey and what Frontier is aiming for its first foray into the world of space legs. Small caveat at this point, I'm not going to claim to know where Frontier is going with this, in that regard they were fairly typically tight lipped and I'm fine with that, I do however have some impressions on what I think they're shooting for no pun intended and a few gut feelings on what Odyssey means and where we might be going on the journey with Odyssey pun fully intended. Odyssey paraphrasing Frontier's own words to us is looking to show the wild west of space a slice of life on the frontiers of Elite Dangerous. If you start thinking dusty outposts and small settlements on the fringe, eking out an existence from the dirt far away from the glittering lights of the federation, Empire and Alliance capital cities then you're in the right ballpark. At one point a question was asked about the large circular city like starport specifically that feature in the game at the moment and it appears that whilst they are still present and will indeed feature interior social hubs they don't yet have any gameplay specifically constructed around their exterior spaces. Odyssey concerns itself much more with the backwaters of civilisation in space than it does main street hustle and bustle. I mentioned at the start of this video about player expectations and how they butt up against developer design decisions. The expectation in the player sphere and indeed in this house was that the launch of Odyssey would see new SRVs or variations on the SRV theme if for no other reason than to add to the participation in the much lauded feature of the sphere of combat. After all the venerable SRV has seen little to no change in its core gameplay since its first appearance in the game way back in May of 2016 nearly 5 years ago as we record this. The way SRVs are used by the player base has certainly changed and I'm not sure they have ever been used in the action packed manner that they were shown in the early horizons gameplay trailers. In the intervening years since their appearance the surface recon vehicle has become a racing car and a platform for planetary surface circumnavigation however no new additions have been made to a chassis that we know is modular by design and no new gameplay has been added for the SRV by Frontier. If we know one thing about Frontier however it's that they quite often go left when we think they're going to go right and the SRV in Odyssey at launch at least certainly seems to be a prime example of that. The question was asked during the presentation about new SRVs and the answer came back that there were none at launch however and this is important a hint was dropped that more would be happening on the SRV front after launch. How far after launch we have no idea but there are the facts for you nonetheless. The SRV issue brings me to a primary point I wanted to make about Odyssey there's a lot in it. When Frontier says it's the biggest update the game has ever had they're not kidding it's huge. The entire crop of currently landable worlds has been completely reworked then tenuous atmospheric worlds have been added on top of that all the ground installations and settlements have been refreshed and given interiors stations all have interior social spaces then there's gameplay around the buildings new missions etc and that's just the stuff we currently know about. We think it extremely likely that New Guardian and Thargoid gameplay is on its way as well at some point. But whilst Odyssey is huge we think more importantly it sets up the future of Elite Dangerous. It's a massive update but it also feels like along with all its new content and experiences it's also bringing a technological infrastructure with it a framework that Frontier can then build on going forward. If you've only joined Elite Dangerous in the last couple of years then you could be mistaken for thinking that this massive expansive galaxy had been largely static since its inception but that just isn't the case. It is true that during the last couple of years the development of the main game has indeed faltered somewhat and aside from fleet carriers there really wasn't a huge amount added to the game at all. If anything when Galnet went quiet and the Thargoid advance suddenly stopped many claimed that Frontier was in the process of shutting down the game but the pit we never believed that was the case and in fact we're now of the opinion that whether it was a good idea or not the reason development on the main game suddenly stalled is in all likelihood because the company poured every development resource it had available into Odyssey. Elite Dangerous is that most of in vogue modern video game experiences a game as a service. In order to survive as such it has to keep the player base constantly engaged in a multi year experience no main feat and in order to keep the player base engaged they require a constant and regular flow of new content, new toys and new things to look forward to. In Elite's early years that's exactly what it did. New features and things to do were constantly added to the game. I've linked below to the Elite Wiki page that details everything added since launch as to list them all here would take too long but the list is huge and contains things like community goals, power play, planetary landings, engineers, ship launched fighters, passenger missions and core mining. It's a huge list and all this was very much emblematic of the golden era of Elite Dangerous when the game had regular quarterly updates and content drops. I've honestly no reason to believe that the game is about to go through some sort of content renaissance and that we're going to see regular content drops like this again. It would be nice but Frontier aren't yet saying what the plan is but if this is what they're planning then we would like to think that many of the much requested player features like ship interiors and spacewalks etc are now in a much better position to be added to the game as Odyssey appears to be laying the foundation that just that kind of gameplay along with lots of other opportunities like thicker atmospheric worlds, more complex alien life, interaction with gas giants or cometary bodies etc could be built on. One last small point. The last paid expansion that Elite Dangerous had was Horizons. It's headline feature being the first planetary landings we've ever had in the game, the moniker of horizons thereby perhaps having a slightly obvious meaning. We are wondering what the meaning if there is one behind Odyssey is. I honestly have no opinion on this but I'm curious to know if you do. Is it just the first literal step on the journey that is Elite Dangerous or is there more to it? The expansion almost certainly contains surprises that we aren't yet aware of. Are we perhaps going on a journey a literal Odyssey of some sort with the expansion that we don't yet know about? Give us your thoughts in the comments below. That's it for now, thanks very much for watching. If you enjoyed this video consider subscribing to the channel and maybe take a look at one of our other videos linked on screen right now.