 On this day two years ago we were in the midst of the Elite Dangerous Odyssey Public Alpha Test. A lot has happened in the years since Odyssey launched and as we approached update 15 we thought we'd take a look back and see just what has been added to the game overall since Odyssey dropped. You know how this bit goes if you enjoy our videos please do hit the thumbs up subscribe and ding that little bell so you don't miss any of our Elite Dangerous content and to directly support our work here at the pit you can also join our Patreon links to that and everything else are below. The Elite Dangerous Odyssey Alpha Test arrived on March the 29th 2021 and ran until the 5th of May 2021. The much anticipated full game was released just two short weeks after without going to a beta phase first and as has been fairly well documented at this point it was sadly very unoptimised and unpolished. It soon became clear that the expansion had been released too early and in an unfinished state. Thereafter began the long journey bringing the game to the place that it is today where those turbulent early months of Odyssey are thankfully a fading memory. Despite its problems however Odyssey did deliver the start of the long awaited on foot portion of Elite's life cycle, space legs or Elite feet as it had become known in the community. Alongside those features two new professions and associated pilots federation rank entered the game to support the on foot activities, those professions being mercenary and exobiologist. There were also redesigns for the mission board, galaxy map, system map, shipyard and redeployment interface. We also gained access to planets with tenuous atmospheres, new engineers and materials to enhance on foot equipment and new plant like life forms among a host of other tweaks and similar additions. Among all the numerous necessary fixes and optimisations that have occurred since then there were also a slew of new features added and changes made to the game that because of the surrounding firestorm at the time often got lost in all the noise. Those new features began appearing four months after launch with the arrival of update 7. NPC vessels could now be found fighting above Odyssey's new surface conflict zones and to welcome their arrival when a conflict broke out, galactic wars are us problem solvers extraordinaire frontline solutions would now deploy large anti-air turrets adjacent to the settlement under dispute. And turrets could be cut into and shut down as well using a handy dandy maverick suit keeping the airspace safer for those fighting overhead. The NPC ships' beletic spiralling above coupled with the infused plapping of the new turrets rapidly became background set dressing however and indeed this remains the case to the day. Surface conflict zones tend to remain largely free of player air traffic as the fighting ships have no real influence or effect on the ground war. The turrets and fighting ships look fantastic but their existence is still sadly lacking a crucial gameplay hook that would make their presence more meaningful. Alongside the conflict zone tweaks Apex interstellar shuttles got a handy redirect feature and module storage and galaxy map bookmark limits were both increased rounding off the new features for update 7. After a cute teaser trailer heralded its arrival update 8 released roughly a month later upping the limit of multi crew members from 3 to 4 and adding new multi crew seats to the crusader, anaconda, beluga, federal corvette, imperial cutter, type 9 and type 10 and 4 new odyssey level engineers were added to the colonia region. Far and away one of the more crowd pleasing additions to update 8 however was the new on foot emote system, commanders could now salute, point, agree and wave etc meaning meeting a commander in game no longer involved an awkward moment of crouching and standing up over and over in order for each individual to acknowledge the existence of the other, this dance like ritual having become the default standard given the lack of any other option up until this point. It was largely expected that the emote feature would be monetized with dances or new emotes becoming available but as of this recording at least the feature hasn't been revisited or added to. New delivery and smuggling missions were added to odyssey and mission contact point NPCs were added to odyssey settlements. As well as that, Wells class mega ships gained interior social spaces meaning odyssey commanders could disembark and move around inside them giving access to mission boards, NPCs as well as frontline solutions, apex interstellar and the rest of the now familiar odyssey social space vending outlets. November 2021 went without a patch release but when the next one update 9 arrived in December it was a doozy. NPC mission providers started to appear at odyssey settlements, the multi limpid controller module was added to the game giving commanders various flavour of career specific limpid controller available in 5 different variants mining, operations, rescue, zeno and universal. So far so useful but none of that was the headline act. Update 9 saw the introduction of the second ever SRV into the game and the first SRV capable of taking a second crew member along for the ride. The now familiar scorpion making it's first appearance. SRV or surface reconnaissance vehicle is really a misnomer for the tanky little cousin to the now venerable scarab, CRV or combat reconnaissance vehicle seeming to be altogether more appropriate. Nowhere near as nimble, fast or light as the scarab the scorpion's strengths come in the taking and dishing out of damage. The huge roof mounted surge repeater cannon and aculeus guided missile launcher ensured that the scorpion had a place in the toolset alongside it's more exploration oriented neighbour. That's not to say that the scorpion is useless on an explorer class vessel however. Just as the scarab can punch hard in the right circumstances the scorpion comes with some serious grunt to carry it up the steepest of terrain and it's incredible stability was a welcome change for those of us who lacked the chops to throw the much twitchier scarab around with ease. The scorpion quickly proved that for many of us it was the car de jour for settlement raids lacking the speed to make a quick exit from a sticky situation it more than had enough armour to survive an angry installation and could hit back hard if it needed to and take one of the new SRVs to an active guardian site and you'll really see it come into its own. After the Christmas break of Odyssey launch year we headed into January and February of 2022 with update 10 and a trickle of smaller updates as more optimisations and fixes were delivered to the now already much more stable expansion. With Odyssey now in a better place there was an expectation in the community that frontier would hit the ground running after all we knew by this point that fleet carrier interiors were the next big headline feature due to arrive in the game and so we started the year figuring Fdev would be keen to talk about it. The harsh reality however was something quite different as Fdev all but shut down any communication with the community aside from absolutely essential updates. It wasn't until March that Fdev's wall of silence began to finally crumble with the unfortunate announcement of Odyssey's cancellation on consoles sending shockwaves through the community. As soon as that particular issue which appears to have been somewhat of a sticking point for the company was out of the way however the updates to the expansion began again in earnest. March 15th saw the much anticipated update 11 arriving bringing amongst other things fleet carrier interiors. Commands finally able to land on their fleet carriers, exit their ship and explore the interior space and services and watch that all important jump sequence from the communal jump room or the comfort of their very own command chair. The command chair came fitted with a handy UI screen that swings in front of the seated commander but that sadly did nothing for the moment at least. Also whilst seated commanders could do only that, stay seated that is. That interfaces and any of the usual on foot functions would have to wait for another update to be usable while seated. Alongside fleet carrier interiors the new protect mission type was added to the safari of Odyssey on foot missions. This tougher than average mission sees commanders defending a McGuffin thingy in a settlement from waves of drop ship deployed criminal types looking to deprive the settlement of its presumably vital to operations McGuffin thingy. With Odyssey now much more stable the density of updates dropped off significantly after update 11 and it was to be 3 months before update 12 arrived in June. The seated UI functionality that was conspicuous by its absence from update 11 arrived as did a smattering of quality of life changes. The headline act however was a new illegal variant of the protect the McGuffin settlement raid from the previous patch. The illegal variant of the protect mission still sees antagonistas dropped by vipers around the settlement as you valiantly defend the thingy from the massed ranks of would be thingy deniers. The twist however being that the thingy deniers in this instance are law enforcement officers and they're being dropped from appropriately painted vipers with spinning lights, wailing sirens and search lights. If you can find the missions it remains to this day quite the spectacle to see But thus far at least the space blues and twos brigade only appear to be part of the illegal protect variant mission. It's a shame actually that these space viper police variants aren't used more often elsewhere in the game whenever and wherever law enforcement turn up which lets be honest is quite often for most of us as they're very impressive particularly at night when the giant forward facing search light really comes into its own. August swings around then and in case you'd forgotten already what update 13 dropped into the game then allow me to remind you. Salvation fired the Proteus wave device in HIP 22460, a cutscene was seen in game for the first time and Odyssey and the live game and what is now called Legacy Elite Dangerous finally went their separate ways with only the live game receiving updates going forward. See after the decimation of the former AX battlegrounds in HIP 22460 the Stargoids began showing up on the fringes of human space headed toward the bubble. After months of being tracked by commanders they eventually arrived on the 29th of November 2022, a new cutscene in the game heralded their arrival and the Thargoid invasion of the bubble began. It's easy to write off the current ongoing Thargoid invasion as just another bug incursion like so many of the previous bug incursions we've seen in the last 8 years or so. But let's not forget this is a dynamic and reactive real time war against an NPC Overlord Warmaster that takes place in a one to one scale simulation of the Milky Way Galaxy. This is no small thing to be participating in. As at the time of this recording the battle for humanity is taking place from the comfort of a cockpit still whether that remains the case and what the future holds however is yet to be determined. Which brings us for now at least up to the present. It's undoubtedly been a long road between here and Odyssey's launch 2 years ago my how time flies and you forget everything that's happened in between. The graphical differences between where Odyssey started in the alpha and where it is today are quite stark. Those changes in between being more evolutionary in nature than they are revolutionary you tend not to see it as it's happening but when viewed in retrospect side by side there is quite a contrast. We're on the cusp of update 15 now currently scheduled for some time in May delivering what is expected to be at the very least the next phase of the Thargoid War. Had you forgotten any of the features that we've listed today just what do you think update 15 will be delivering and what would you like to see beyond update 15? 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.