 Odyssey, the much anticipated Space Legs expansion for Elite Dangerous launched on the PC just under 3 months ago. Whilst the expansion is not yet where it should have been at launch, it has undoubtedly seen significant improvements since its rocky start. With the game now in a more stable position, it's much easier to make an assessment of exactly what is Elite Dangerous Odyssey bringing to the table and importantly, why? To make sure you don't miss any of our videos, hit like and subscribe, remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and to help directly support this channel, you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. Even without bugs and launch day woes, the Odyssey expansion has been a somewhat divisive addition to the ED universe. Adding working legs and the ability to finally leave the comfort of a pilot's chair has without doubt not been to everyone's taste in what some players saw as a game about spaceships and nothing more. The truth of it is that the addition of planetary landings, SRVs and now atmospheres and the ability to walk around were all part of the game's now much dissected and analysed kickstarter videos featuring David Braben from 2012. These features were always on the cards and Odyssey is just the next iteration of that process. What I think the Odyssey expansion has tried to do is sit the on foot experience as a separate layer on top of the existing in ship experience. The reason being that if you don't want to participate in the first person content in its different forms then the base game and indeed horizons are still there and for the most part are largely unsullied by the sudden appearance of working thighs, knees and toes. So what is Odyssey adding to the game? To answer that question let's take a step back for a moment and try and take in the larger picture. Unlike a lot of its more mainstream titles Frontier takes a very iterative approach to Elite Dangerous. That's to say the game tends to evolve with small additional updates over time to gradually improve and expand on the experience it presents. And then every so often there is a larger addition that is more of a revolution. This pattern was seen with the initial release of the game in 2013. Post launch, the base game later added community goals, the addition of wings now called teams, then later came power play, CQC, new ships, new mission types, module storage and the ability to transfer your ship. All these additions were mostly done in small iterative updates as the base game progressed. Were you new to the game at this point you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was all in at the start and then Elite Dangerous Horizons happened but that just isn't the case. Likewise when Horizons launched it was in a base form and was iterated on after launch. Seeing features like hybrid fighters, galnet audio, wing missions, material traders, tech brokers, mega ships and installations, scenario missions, huge sweeping changes to mining including the addition of core mining and various task specific mining modules, huge changes to exploration including the addition of notable stellar phenomena, galactic regions and the FSS scanner and that's not even the exhaustive list of the additions made. Later and more recent updates have seen the addition of game changing features like the fleet carrier, the advanced docking computer, super cruise assist modules and the pilots federation starter zone to accommodate new players entering the game. So where does Odyssey fit into this? It is, I believe at least, the next step up in a continuing iterative and evolutionary process. It is the next level flaw that supports the next tier of Elite's continuing growth. As a headline example of what I'm talking about ship interiors were promised as a future feature for the game in 2012 and we know that features like spacewalks have been conceptualized by Frontier for Elite. In order for these two features alone to exist Odyssey has to happen. Odyssey and the addition of a basic first person movement system and everything that that entails is actually a dependency for future features like ship interiors or spacewalks etc. They simply can't happen unless space legs happens first. When Frontier stated recently that ship interiors were not being worked on what I think they mean is that they're not being worked on as part of Odyssey. I do believe that they are very much still part of the plan. After all Elite feet didn't arrive with planetary landings in horizons but they did eventually arrive. Whilst Odyssey right now can seem like a basic implementation of a headline feature that's exactly what Elite Dangerous was at launch in 2013. It then evolved to become what I feel is still the preeminent open universe space trader simulation. The problem Frontier have right now is that because of the problems at launch they have not yet been able to meaningfully talk about what Odyssey means for the future of Elite let alone concentrate on the process of iterating on what is there right now. I've honestly no idea what kind of timescales Frontier are eyeballing to progress Odyssey but I do believe they'll do it. We have already seen some small progress with the recent addition of enforcer troops at ground installations and anti-ship defences in ground combat zones. But I think it likely that any larger steps forward will not happen until we're much nearer the console launch of the expansion or even after it. With the exception of an overly buggy launch cycle so far Odyssey has fit the profile for what has come before it and what has actually worked quite well for Frontier with regard to all things Elite Dangerous in the past. But what do you think? Is Odyssey a static product? What's there is all there will ever be or is there more to Odyssey than meets the eye? Let us know 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.