 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 26th of March 2021 I'm CMDR Buur In this week's Odyssey special report Frontier shows off a first person tour of a starport social hub Odyssey's assistant producer reveals some juicy gameplay details in a live streamed interview and games radar releases some previously unseen Odyssey gameplay footage If you enjoy 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 and 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 Here we go then Thursday night's live stream saw a new gameplay trailer released by Frontier that gives us our first proper look at a starport's interior space After the video the community team sat down virtually speaking of course with Samantha Marsh the assistant producer on Elite Dangerous Odyssey to discuss what was shown and what wasn't shown and to add a bit more flesh to the bones of the whole presentation and we're going to break it all down for you right here The first thing that strikes from watching the 7.5 minute tour and listening to Samantha's interview is the overall gameplay design ethos of the space Rather than simulate miles and miles of corridors and buildings fdev has instead chosen to streamline the experience and keep the on foot station interactions immersive but not overly bloated It's also worth keeping in mind that this starport interior is just one of many and whilst the layout will remain similar and familiar to aid in player navigation there are in fact a number of different station interiors that will change according to the function of the station and each will have their own distinct look and feel likewise planetary ports will have similar and familiar functions they also present a vastly different view and experience over that of their orbital cousins Samantha went on to emphasise there will be plenty of room and variety in stations for you to somewhat meander around and look at details so they're designed so that you can run in fill up with missions and run out again to that end you won't find yourself exploring a massive maze of twisting corridors and dark back alleyways needing to utilise public transportation systems to access areas of the city size space stations instead what is presented is more akin to an open plan shopping mall with separately themed booths and sectioned off shops and facilities with a large bar area that also serves as a viewport out into the starport landing pads whilst no ship movements were shown in the trailer Frontier have been at pains to point out on a number of occasions that in the full game this view of the station interior is in fact live and you will see other players ships landing and departing and as far as we know ships will be able to see what's happening in the bar as well as the player character moves through the hub Elite's sound design is once again very evident and there is a constant stream of background ambience and chatter coming from the non-player characters in fact as the player moves past the NPCs some of them do attempt to garner their attention with calls for assistance and the offer of work When the player character chooses to interact with an NPC the experience switches to the sort of thing that we're more used to seeing in an RPG like Skyrim there is a brief moment of introductory voiced character audio and accompanied text and then it changes to a slightly more familiar text based mission briefing and shows rewards you might gain from a successful completion Interface design for this section has clearly had a lick of paint over and above what we're used to with our in-ship mission boards and whilst the characters shown are basically animated three-dimensional mission boards there is an added extra layer of depth when the player character is presented with the opportunity to negotiate a better deal with one shady individual The bartering success or failure is determined as you'd expect with Elite by a degree of RNG but its outcome is influenced by the reputation you have with the faction offering the mission and what's called your mercenary rank it seems that with Odyssey you'll have a new more personal reputation or rank that determines in part at least how some NPCs will interact with you The example shown had three bartering options essentially offering a low, medium and high reward chance with the higher rewards coming in with an increased risk of the bartering failing and in the interview Frontier did confirm that failure to barter successfully will remove the mission altogether so care is needed If you fail the mission having bartered a better deal for yourself the price of failure could potentially be worse with your faction or superpower standing being reduced We're going to assume that the higher tier of bartering success will garner much more significant rewards over and above those of credit otherwise it's unlikely that the extra risk would be worth it as money is largely meaningless in the game for anyone that has been playing for a significant amount of time however for new players coming into the game the chance of some extra credits just for flashing a smile and a wink will doubtless be extremely valuable What does have value for everyone in Elite however is engineering materials which brings us onto the barkeeper The barkeeper appears to serve a similar role to a material trader in the current game your character has a pool of what looks to be generic scavenged or stolen assets which can be used to trade for more specific engineering materials to upgrade your personal equipment and spacesuits Those generic assets fall into three categories chemicals, circuits and tech In the demonstration the player is seen trading some generic chemicals from a personal stock with the barkeeper in order to obtain some graphene The barkeeper also had an option to trade some other goods but the specifics of that option weren't shown in the demonstration Elsewhere in the demo we're shown pioneer supplies the equipment, spacesuits and weapons vendor and Inter Astra which essentially serves as the shipyard in first person gameplay In the case of pioneer supplies the trailer does scoot around the shop and exit without providing more detail but Samantha went on to elaborate that modifications can be added to your weapons here and that in some cases there is a chance that the vendor could offer you a pre-upgraded weapon or modification that is not generally available elsewhere with the higher upgrades being rarer to get Before departing the station in a newly purchased dolphin more on that in a moment the player stops by some mission terminals that offer up a more generic and frankly quicker mission gathering experience that is much more like that from the in-ship experience that we're used to You're able to review the missions on offer from all the factions at a station and shown the rewards you'll garner for a successful completion of those missions It wasn't immediately evident what the difference between the mission boards and the NPC missions are, beyond immersion and speed etc but we're guessing that the rewards for the personal missions are perhaps more unique and more valuable to the on foot player specifically and we'll have to see how that pans out in the full game At the end of the trailer the player then heads to the docking bay and after accessing a super fast elevator that separates the bay from the rest of the social hub we're treated to a view of a brand new shiny dolphin sitting on a small landing pad it's a familiar setting and a familiar ship we're just not used to seeing it like this and it's honestly extremely impactful The player then approaches the blue ship boarding hologram that we saw on the heist trailer a couple of weeks back and we do now get to see the fade to black boarding method from the pilot's perspective Once boarding is selected from the pop-up menu there's a brief fade to black before the player appears in the pilot's position inside the dolphin I wasn't personally bothered by the fade to black from a first person perspective it will make getting into your ship quick and efficient something that I suspect I'll be extremely grateful for when boarding something like a beluga or an anaconda or indeed when myself or my ship are on the ground and under fire What I am still curious and more than a little anxious about is what someone else will see when they witness me boarding my ship Will my character be animated climbing into or out of the ship somehow or will I just pop in and out of existence when I reach that blue hologram one of them will look awesome the other will honestly be jarring and somewhat immersion breaking When it comes to SRV and SLF deployments Frontier have previously done a beautiful job of showing these two ancillary vehicles leaving and returning to their mother vessel from a third person perspective while still using a fade to black in the first person to speed the whole thing along and so we're hoping that the player character's transition to and from the ship will follow the same tried and tested pattern it'll certainly be one of the first things we look for on Monday when the alpha drops Overall we were left very satisfied with what we saw of the station tour it's clear what Frontier are going for with this expansion and in the example shown they have achieved what they set out to do with some significant style I do personally think this portion of the first person experience will also only improve with the addition of other players running around going about their business gods of instancing willing obviously The interview with Samantha also went on to flesh out a little more about places that weren't shown in the trailer mentioning Vista Genomics where players will be able to trade in biological samples taken from organics on a planet surface for the biologist rank The team also mentioned that the various life forms will display different levels of maturity and growth and that existing life forms and organics have been reworked and given a refresh with odyssey meaning that even discovering something as familiar as a brain tree should now be a different experience from the current game Elsewhere in the interview the team touched on the Frontlines Solutions system Frontlines Solutions is a system for getting you into a large ground based combat zone in the system you're in and whilst you can fly to the zone and walk in if you book your participation through Frontlines Solutions you will be deployed in a drop ship The combat zones vary wildly depending on where they are on a planet the planet's position in the system and the time of day You could be deployed in full daylight or you could find yourself in a night time battlescape with nothing but torches and gunfire lighting the way They also mentioned that the conflicts will feature control points that could be a case of overwhelming the enemy with kills It appears at least that territorial control of some sort could be a factor and Arthur did mention when playing it that he got serious Starship Troopers dropship seen vibes from it All I'm going to say is Thargoid combat zones I'll just leave that there Other little nuggets that we gleaned from the interview include the fact that there are apparently over music tracks in the bar area Squadron party in the bar confirmed When you book a taxi from Apex Interstellar, more on that in a moment the travel you experience will be in real time, I'm fairly certain that that little fact alone will divide opinion significantly and the team did make mention of what they called elite ranks and beyond and said there will be more on this in the future There's clearly been some significant changes in the UI and the UI team will be making an appearance on an upcoming live stream to talk about what we can expect to see After the interview, Arthur and Bruce did make mention that a good number of features are being held back from the imminent alpha test to save any spoilers if nothing else Those features include but are not limited to plasma weapons guardian and Thargoid sites and some variations of the organics to scan and discover between phase 3 and 4 of the alpha there will be some downtime where the alpha will be unavailable and during that period a snapshot of the full game will be taken so if you want your commander in a certain place with a certain ship ready for phase 4 then that's the time to do it Currently the plan is for each phase of the alpha to be a week long but that may be subject to change as testing progresses No solid launch time for the alpha to drop on Monday but the team are aiming for a round midday You'll find links in the video description to the Starport tours trailer and the full live stream including the interview with Samantha Marsh And finally Frontier promised that a new feature for Odyssey would be shown off on a games radar live stream yesterday evening and sure enough during their future games showcase there was a short trailer that talked about Odyssey which showed some exclusive never before seen footage of the Apex interstellar space shuttle booking system You can see some screen grabs from it running on screen at the moment Honestly it wasn't really worth staying up late for but it is evident that the system that's been built around Apex is slick and functional As you'd perhaps expect there is a higher fee the further you travel and the system map has had a make over as well as part of the UI changes in Odyssey which was interesting to see The whole experience appears to be kept completely in game In Safari's once your shuttle is booked you walk to the hangar get in the ship that is waiting for you and we know from the interview earlier in the evening what then happens is completely real time as best we can determine you are flown by the AI to the planetary port or station that you booked to travel to just as though you were doing it yourself Whether that flight can be interdicted and ganked Well we'll just need to test that I imagine The presentation which we've linked to below and the interview earlier really did give the briefest of overviews with regard to Apex and we still have many unanswered questions For example once you're on the planet surface at a star port how do you then get to the POI or mission spot that you're interested in or do you just walk through the space of the alpha next week we'll have commanders solely using Elite's new space uber service to get about in a single star system So either way our answers are just a couple of days away from now So there we have it A huge day yesterday and there's a lot to take in How are you feeling about what you've now seen and heard or like me did you hear drop ship and then just shut down dribbling Let us know in the comments below That's it for now Thank you very much for watching We'll be back later this week with more videos Until then, 07 commanders follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack We very much look forward to seeing you next time